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AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



AN 



HONORABLE -SURRENDER 



BY 



MARY ADAMS 



" Cotild there be a slenderer, tnore insignificant thread in human 
history than this conscionsfiess of a girl, busy with her stnall inferences 
of the way in tvhich she could make her life pleasant? . . . 

" In these delicate vessels is borne onward throiigh the ages the treas- 
ure of human affections." — George Eliot. 



^ 




NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1883 






Copyright, 1883, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



I. 

" In the spring 
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, 
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing." 

Shakspeare. 

Around the village of Unity, lie low and 
swampy meadow-lands, crossed and recrossed by 
the many arms of a shallow river that winds its 
silver threads over their broad surface. 

Meadows are like some examples of human 
worth, — they keep their loveliness for their 
lovers only. Why should the sight of a stretch 
of marshes fill and satisfy a beauty-loving soul ? 
Yet he who has seen these lowlands in their 
fresh green robes, light and shadow under masses 
of cloud in a spring sky, who has felt the warm 
sun and cool wind of the May day, and has seen 
its joy of life visible in every rush and grass of 

5 



6 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

the meadow, and every ripple of the stream, may 
have drawn from these tranquil sources a keen 
and delicate pleasure that retains a singular fresh- 
ness in the recollection. 

It was on such a morning as this that Ken- 
neth Lawrence, standing on the level shore of 
Unity River, saw a boat, rowed by a girl, slide 
from under the bridge, and disappear in the upper 
windings of the stream. When he left the river- 
side, he took with him a picture of blue sky above, 
blue water below, and between them the boat, and 
the young figure bending to its oars. The im- 
pression that the meadows made upon Lawrence 
was that of a great stillness, a pause. He reflected 
that he had arrived at a pause in his own life. 

He was not a remarkable-looking man. He 
was thirty years old, was obviously a gentleman, 
was tall and rather lightly built, and had a trick 
of carrying his head a trifle bent, which, though 
not a physical grace, saved him from any appar- 
ent awkward consciousness of his inches. 

He was a " writer of books," and among books 
of those called novels. He had contrived to 
astonish that portion of the public whose depart- 
ment in literature was observation and criticism, 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 7 

and who were more or less actively occupied in 
looking for the coming American novel, when 
Mr. Lawrence appeared on the scene with a fine, 
crisp, delicate style, a subtle, underlying vein of 
satire, an entire absence of plot, and a cool, 
direct, minute analysis of character. 

In his sketches the incidents were few, the 
motives of action often insufficient and com- 
monplace rather than heroic, and the atmosphere 
was not that of romance, but was clear, gray, and 
reasonable, without being actually realistic. All 
subjects that he handled were made charming by 
his deft, accurate touch. In a word, Mr. Law- 
rence had discovered a vein, and cultivated tastes 
soon discovered Mr. Lawrence. Critics turned 
his delicate, highly finished studies over again 
and again without materially harming them, while 
the appreciative portion of the public hailed the 
novel, unhackneyed productions ; and when a dis- 
tinguished English review committed a distin- 
guished blunder, in confounding Mr. Lawrence 
with a gentleman whose name differed from his 
as to a vowel in spelling, and, on being corrected, 
presented its apologies, the American's success 
was declared complete. 



8 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Not that he became popular : that is doubtless 
a vulgar distinction, and his more fastidious ad- 
mirers would have been somewhat disgusted had 
popularity fallen to his share. Yet at times he 
might have found its attendant prosperity conven- 
ient, and an increased income worth the praises 
of all the critical circle. For in earlier life he 
had also astonished his family ; and, in this case, 
the result was not agreeable. The Lawrences 
were not accustomed to having genius among 
them. There were Lawrences who were mer- 
chants, lawyers, and clergymen. They were emi- 
nently respectable, creditable, and successful in 
whatever they undertook ; but they were not 
usually brilliant, and they had a natural aversion 
to brilliancy of any sort, holding that it was spe- 
cious and shallow. Kenneth's father had been 
an anomaly, — an unsuccessful Lawrence. In his 
forty years of life nothing went well with him. 
He never played a game but he lost it, and never 
found a path that had not misfortunes at every 
step. This being John Lawrence's fate, at his 
death he left to a successful brother his sole 
legacy, — Kenneth, a little lad of ten. 

The brother was a very favorable specimen of 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 9 

the accepted and approved type of the race, 
Henry Lawrence of Lawrence & Co., Farborough 
Iron-works. He was middle-aged, clear-headed, of 
the honest, obstinate Lawrence temper, with plenty 
of sturdy, matter-of-fact kindness in his nature, 
whenever that nature was called upon in language 
that it understood. He had no sons, a matter of 
keenest regret to him ; and he took his brother's 
orphan the more willingly because of this, and, 
because of this, was the more resolved to make 
Kenneth all that a Lawrence usually was and 
always should be. It was long before he discov- 
ered that he was vainly trying to force a living, 
resisting nature into a straitened mould wholly 
unsuited to it ; and, when he did make the dis- 
covery, his surprise was somewhat pathetic, — 
supposing pathos to be a possible element in 
the life of a middle-aged and successful capital- 
ist. 

For Kenneth was not, and never could be, a 
conventional Lawrence. 

At fifteen he developed a talent for writing 
bad verses and ambitious romances, — a talent 
not adapted to any of his uncle's requirements. 

^ can make nothing of him," said Henry Law- 



\ 



lO A A' HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

rence ; and he was right enough, for, worse or 
better, the nature was ah-eady formed. 

Kenneth, on his part, found the process of 
moulding severe ; and the years were perhaps as 
trying to him as they were unsatisfactory to his 
uncle. A climax was inevitable, but it came in 
no dramatic form. There was not even an open 
quarrel ; and when he left his uncle's house, it was 
with the civillest hand-shake, and with mutual 
expressions of good-will. Nevertheless he was 
in no hurry to come back again. 

When he was twenty-five he no longer indulged 
in the verses and romances. He had found his 
level, and was already writing analytical sketches 
and studies. Upon this followed five years of 
such success as has been noted : then came a 
slight check. 

Lawrence made an innovation upon his usual 
style, and fell under the disapproval of his critics. 
He was not very seriously disturbed. He had 
never claimed to be a genius, his conceit not 
being of the vulgar, grandiloquent sort ; but the 
change was certainly not agreeable. It was the 
more awkward for coming in a time of enforcec^ 
idleness, overtasked eyes precluding work of ^/ 



/ 
/' 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. II 

sort ; and it was too early in the season to visit 
the mountains in which he was in the habit of 
spending his holidays. 

The event that broke this dead calm was the 
death of Henry Lawrence. 

Kenneth made no particular pretence of sor- 
row ; but he went down to Farborough with a 
soft kindliness of feeling for the ugly, substan- 
tial house, the plain, sensible mistress and her 
daughters, and all the old, homely prosperity. 
And he was not ashamed of the odd, unusual 
tenderness, as he might have been ashamed ten 
years before. He had outlived the stoicism he 
had affected at twenty. 

Then there was the reading of the will ; and 
it was found that Henry Lawrence, who in his 
whole staid life had astonished no one, was yet 
capable of surprising his heirs with the maddest 
of eccentric wills. At least, that was what Ken- 
neth said of it, telling the story in his own way 
to Davis Baxter, friend and critic to Lawrence, 
critic in his public capacity as well. 

Kenneth was considered the fortunate person. 
To him had fallen the generous and unexpected 
legacy. It was, however, a legacy weighted by 



12 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

conditions, and the terms were certainly very 
embarrassing to Kenneth. 

*'I don't at all miderstand what I am to do 
with the active management of Farborough Iron- 
works," he said ruefully. "That is the express con- 
dition : there never was a more preposterous one." 

The friend removed his cigar, and came up to 
the perpendicular attitude. " Lawrence," he re- 
marked, "you know as much of iron-works as I 
do of Sanscrit." 

" Exactly," said Lawrence. " Otherwise I 
should not call my uncle insane." 

" You are all right, I dare say. Your manage- 
ment need not be personal. You can be nomi- 
nally Lawrence of Farborough, actually any thing 
you like." 

" I suppose you know very well I will be noth- 
ing of the sort. The case is simple enough. My 
uncle had no sons, but the iron-works must con- 
tinue in the Lawrence name. I am a novelist, 
not a machinist : still, the iron-works. He made 
a sort of fetich of them, and he proposes that 
I continue the devotions. It is absurd, if you 
like. Most things are, from a certain point of 
view ; but that is no argument. To my mind, 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 3 

it is plain enough. Either I assume the trust as 
punctiliously as it was intended ; or I decline the 
obligations, and the legacy, and walk off in the 
opposite direction. I don't wish to talk like a 
prig," he concluded with a slight laugh ; *' but it 
is — a point of honor." 

''And so a matter of good taste with you,'* 
said the other sardonically. 

" Oh ! very well," said Lawrence with credit- 
able good-humor. " That is not the point under 
discussion. The objection to all this is, that I 
have a fetich of my own." 

*' K. Lawrence, Esq., novelist } " 

** Precisely. I deny having any exalted opinion 
of the fellow ; but, on the other hand, I don't 
deny having a great regard for him. And I am 
not equal to the task of managing the machinery 
of Farborough Iron-works and the machinery of 
a novel at the same time. Happily, I am aware 
of the fact, and am not likely to attempt impos- 
sibilities." 

Here Lawrence took up a pen, and twirled the 
handle slowly between his fingers. 

" I don't like giving up my familiar," he said 
thoughtfully. 



14 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" I think I could resign my ' familiar ' very 
cheerfully, in favor of a substantial equivalent." 

" So I should have said a week ago. I believe 
I know most of the discomforts of the trade. 
Why, Baxter, there is a notch in the edge of my 
desk that I cannot look at without recalling un- 
comfortably the hours I have sat staring at it 
half-frenzied, half-stupefied, hunting a phrase, or 
grasping at a nebulous idea. Yet here is the 
substantial equivalent, and still I come back to 
the notch in my desk." 

*' You can't take both } " 

" Impossible. I should either land Lawrence 
& Co. in an inextricable muddle, or deteriorate in 
a literary sense, take to telling situations and 
popular fiction generally. The combination is 
absurd." 

'' I don't see that." 

"Ah ! but I do," said Lawrence moodily. 

"But what are you going to do about it ? " 
urged Baxter. 

" Happily, I am not required to do any thing 
at once," said Lawrence, rising. " I have four 
months for decision. In the mean time I am 
going out of town for six weeks to a place called 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 5 

Unity. Puritanic, colonial sort of name, isn't it ? 
I doubt if it has other attractions ; but it will do, 
I dare say. I remember going there once with 
my father. He had friends there too, but I have 
forgotten who they were. I am going out to 
grass, like Nebuchadnezzar.'* 

"Bring back your wits." 

" Or my legacy," laughed Kenneth. 

They shook hands on it. Lawrence took an 
afternoon train out of town, and the next morn- 
ing stood on the banks of the river, and saw the 
green meadows in the sun, and the blue of the 
spring sky. 

He was not at all in a mood to appreciate the 
finer beauties of the spring day, but its influ- 
ences were not wholly lost upon him ; and the 
following day he came back over the white road, 
winding down from the village to the bridge, — a 
staid and sober structure that spanned the main 
channel of Unity River. 

Upon the sides of the bridge little recesses, 
with peaked, rustic roofs, hung over the stream ; 
and, sitting in one of these, a girl leaned forward 
upon the rail, and looked up the river. At first 
sight, it seemed a wonder that she could remain 



1 6 AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

SO motionless in the piercing air. This was a 
gray day, with purple clouds in the cold sky, and 
a keen wind that swept the meadows, and cut the 
dark surface of the water into gleaming, steely 
furrows. 

Then it became a matter of regret that fair 
possibilities, suggested by a girlish shape, and 
brown hair coiled low upon her neck, should be 
turned only upon the unobservant meadows and 
the chilling wind. 

In a second glance, Lawrence saw that the rail 
upon which she leaned was split, and bent sharply 
where it joined the upright support, and was likely, 
at any moment, to precipitate its burden into the 
water. 

He hesitated, but finally said, in his neat, crisp 
tones, " Pardon me, but you should not lean upon 
that rail. It is unsafe." 

At first she did not reply ; and when the an- 
swer came it was in a dull tone, and unaccom- 
panied by any movement. 

** Thank you. I am not afraid." 

" Still I advise you to move," he urged. " You 
are likely to fall into the river at any moment." 
At this she moved slightly backward, but without 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1/ 

speaking, or giving her adviser a glimpse of her 
face ; and Lawrence walked on with an agreeable 
sense of having been remarkably officious. If he 
had looked back, he might have seen that she had 
made her position a degree more dangerous than 
before ; resting her head on her crossed arms, 
and leaning more heavily upon the treacherous 
support. 

He had gone but a few yards when a sharp 
crash, followed by a cry, brought him back on a 
run. And this was what had happened : the rail 
of a sudden snapped smartly, and the obstinate 
person who leaned on it fell forward, but not into 
the river. 

She had caught one of the upright supports, 
and clung desperately, hanging over the dark, 
gleaming water. 

Well-grown young women are not feather- 
weights ; but Lawrence was strong, and the girl 
not more helpless than her position obliged her 
to be. '* Put your foot in that niche," he said 
briefly. " Now spring a little," grasping her 
firmly. 

In a moment she was standing on the planks 
of the bridge. 



1 8 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" You are not hurt, I hope ? " he said rather 
breathlessly. 

"Thank you, no : I am not hurt." 

But she sat down hastily upon the rustic bench, 
and leaned her elbow on the rail, and her cheek 
upon her hand. 

Lawrence was not aware that he noticed the 
pure outlines of wrist and throat, the brown mass 
of hair upon her neck ; but he remembered them 
afterwards. 

She was trembling visibly. 

"You must not be too much frightened," he 
said kindly. " There was no great danger." 

" Not if it had broken a little sooner, or later t 
Not if you had not come at all } " looking at him 
with dilated eyes. They were large eyes, and 
their long lashes curled upward. 

^^ If is an ugly word, why use it.?" He was 
not aware of talking as if to a child. " Actually, 
there was no harm done. And the river is not 
deep, I think." 

"Six feet under the bridge," said the girl. "And 
six inches of water above one's head is enough." 

She shuddered, and closed her eyes. Her face 
was absolutely without color. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 9 

Lawrence discreetly walked over to the gap, 
and examined the broken rail. 

It was not necessary, for she was not noticing 
him. Presently he came back again. " You are 
badly frightened, I'm afraid," he said at last. 
Pause. " Will you allow me to walk back to the 
village with you .? " 

*'No, I thank you," she said simply, without 
moving. Lawrence took another uncomfortable 
turn, and came back again. " The fact is, I don't 
at all like leaving you," he said bluntly. 

She opened her eyes, and looked at him with 
a faint gleam of amusement in them. A dimple 
showed in one smooth cheek. 

"I won't jump through the gap," she said, 
"or break down the rail on the other side." 

After a moment she rose to her feet, and in- 
clined her head with a slight, graceful movement. 
"Good-morning," she said distinctly. There was 
nothing for Lawrence to do but raise his hat, and 
walk off in the opposite direction. 

" She had a singular manner," he mused, as he 
went. "Quiet enough, but quiet with an effort; 
controlled, rather. Not that she was not self- 
possessed : she was, remarkably so. And there 



20 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

never was any thing more delicious than her dis' 
missal of me, both the act, and the manner of it. 
She never entertained the idea of accepting my 
offer, yet she was too clever to set it down as 
an impertinence. A strange creature on Unity 
Bridge." 

The unexpected had given a welcome impulse 
to his colorless day and mood ; but, all the same, 
he was conscious of an unreasonable tingle of 
annoyance. 

He followed the road where it plunged into a 
belt of willows, whose interlacing shadows, on 
brighter days, wavered on the white road in dan- 
cing shapes of sun and shade ; and was nearly 
through them, when a light, uneven patter of 
steps, close behind, caused him to turn quickly, 
and see his late companion, somewhat flushed 
and breathless after a race that would not have 
disgraced a schoolboy. Lawrence was profoundly 
astonished, not to say scandalized ; for, in his 
experience, well-bred young women did not run 
after strangers. 

" I could not help it," she gasped. '* I must 
speak to you. I " — 

"Pray don't try to speak yet," he remon- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 21 

strated, raising one hand with a deprecating 
movement. 

She stood panting, a transparent color reaching 
the roots of her hair. *' I am behaving very 
strangely," she said hurriedly; "but I felt that 
I must tell you I did not intend it. You did not 
think I intended to fall off the bridge .'' " 

*' Surely not," said Lawrence. *'I should never 
have thought of any thing so unlikely." He was 
struggling with an inward desire to laugh, and 
the effort he made after self-control made him 
look detestably solemn and conscious. 

" It is unlikely," she said with dignity. *' Still 
you might have thought ^t, but you would have 
been mistaken. I only wished to have my way. 
I don't know why I should have been so unrea- 
sonable ; but I never intended to fall off the 
bridge, you must not think it," insistently. '' I 
suppose you will think me insane, at least : I 
have given you every right to think so." 

"Not at all," said Lawrence stoutly. He was 
very far from being sure of what he ought to 
say ; but he added, " Believe me, I am not think- 
ing any thing you would dislike." 

She seemed to resent the attempted consolation. 



22 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

*'You must think me very undignified," she said 
hastily. " I am aware of it, but it could not be 
helped. I felt that I must speak, or it would 
always trouble me. Not that I have made any 
thing better by speaking. And you do not 
understand : I cannot expect that you should." 

" Perhaps I understand better than you sup- 
pose," ventured Lawrence. 

She did not reply, but repeated the httle 
stately movement of her head, and turned back 
between the rows of yellow-green willows. Law- 
rence had the grace not to laugh for full five 
minutes. 

When he came back over the bridge an hour 
later, he made a small discovery. It was a paper- 
bound book lying close up to the railing of the 
bridge. Lawrence decided that it must belong to 
the young lady who had astonished and amused 
him earlier in the day. When he took it up, and 
looked at the title, he raised his eyebrows in 
some surprise, and said, *' Curious ! " and then he 
brought them down again, and scowled, and 
reflected. " I don't know that it is curious. You 
can't count on a dead level of rustic simplicity in 
any of our villages now ; and I doubt if there is 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2$ 

a middle link between the primitive being and 
the young woman who knocks you down with 
some sort of high-school knowledge. On the 
whole, I don't know why she shouldn't take to 
literature of this sort instead of mathematics." 

Lawrence was just then forbidden to read, on 
account of his eyes ; and the printed lines were 
all the more attractive because of this. Besides, 
the book was familiar to him. He continued to 
shift the pages, and presently came upon some 
lines enclosed in pencil that caused him to repeat 
his muscular exclamations. 

" I suppose she fancies that applies to herself. 
Otherwise she wouldn't enclose it. And so she 
has ideas about herself, — analytical ideas. Ah ! 
we all have them now, and we are all more or 
less mistaken. I should prefer her without them, 
though. Now, I ought to take myself down by 
suggesting that I am not required to prefer her 
at all." 

By and by he opened the book at the titlepage. 

Written diagonally across one of the lower 
corners was the word " Fairfields," and above it 
the initials "A. D." 



24 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



II. 



" He would have passed a pleasant life of it in despite of the 

Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a 

being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, 

goblins, and the whole race of witches put together ; and that was 

— a woman." 

Washington Irving. 

Three white church-spires guarded Unity, and 
from one of them fell the five solemn strokes that 
woke Kenneth next morning. 

The bell had a peculiarly grave and sober tone. 
It seemed fitted to be the voice of a serious- 
minded community. 

Lawrence roused himself lazily, and decided 
that he could not go to sleep again. 

He remembered that he had neglected to ask 
the breakfast hour, and wondered if it would turn 
out to be six or seven. On the whole, he felt 
bored. 

When he had dressed, and was wide awake, he 
felt less so. Finally he went out for a walk. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2$ 

Unity had not much to offer in point of distinct 
picturesqueness. Kenneth thought the village 
looked fairly prosperous, but he also thought that 
he was not accustomed to judge of the prosper- 
ity of villages. Possibly he was deluded by the 
square whiteness of most of the houses, and the 
ambitious roofs and gables of others. 

The front-yards were neatly fenced in, and the 
fences were very white. The grass inside was of 
the fresh spring color. The fruit-trees were at 
the final stage of budding. The vegetable-gar- 
dens between the houses showed a great deal of 
brown earth, dotted and streaked with different 
shades and shapes of green, in various stages of 
immaturity. 

Kenneth followed one of the streets out of the 
village limits. There the road wound down a hill 
into a valley, and, by way of the valley, plunged 
directly into the outlying meadows. He did not 
go very far, and turned back without receiving a 
much more distinct impression than he had been 
able to get from the square houses and the neat 
fences. A scene like this relies for its effect upon 
a sense of familiarity, or of practical use, or upon 
an unexacting love of nature. 



26 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

It had no associations for Lawrence. He was 
entirely ignorant as to what was growing in the 
vegetable-gardens ; and, though he could rejoice 
in a clean beach and a bright sea, or a noble out- 
look from a mountain, he knew nothing about 
loving a field simply because it was a field. 

When he came in he found he had still half an 
hour to wait for breakfast. He went up to his 
room, and looked at the book he had found on 
the bridge. He decided to ask Mrs. Hardy about 
"Fairfields." Mrs. Hardy was his landlady. 

When he went down to breakfast, she was 
already at the table, clicking the cups together 
in her thin, nervous hands. She was a small 
woman, young enough to have a light, girlish fig- 
ure, and old enough to have some careworn lines 
in her shrewd, not unpleasing, face. She was not 
a native of Unity, and seemed to have a lively 
dislike for place and people, that rather amused 
Lawrence. She considered that her boarders re- 
quired to be entertained, especially male boarders. 
She entertained Lawrence so vigorously that he 
was rather afraid of her. 

He decided not to ask her about " Fairfields ; ** 
but it was a long morning, and by dinner-time he 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 2/ 

was glad to fall back upon the slight interest of 
his question. ^ 

He learned that '' Fairfields " was on the road 
leading east from Unity ; that it was a white farm- 
house, shaded by two great elms at the gate, and 
standing where the road grew level for a space 
before plunging into the lowlands and across the 
causeway. 

He also heard something of a story connected 
with the place, and with the girl he had seen on 
the bridge. 

Some twenty-five years ago, a gay Irishman, 
Cornelius Dinsmore, arrived in Boston from Eng- 
land, bringing with him a number of pretty talents 
which had never been of conspicuous use to him, 
and a collection of pleasant vices which had placed 
him in various embarrassments. He was a good- 
looking, pleasant fellow ; and there was a kind of 
magnificence about him that connected his dissi- 
pations with the idea of brilliant society and the 
names of noted European cities, and his ambigu- 
ous cleverness with the idea of great latent ability. 
And then he had the gift of believing in himself, 
without appearing to take himself seriously. 



28 AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

He was a clever half-amateur in a certain 
branch of journalism. His regular-correspondent 
talent was the most notable gift he had ; and, 
for a year or two after his arrival, he worked 
harder and better than he ever had in his life, 
and managed to thrive very well. 

The second year he went out of town in June ; 
and one evening he got down from the top of a 
lumbering stage into Unity Main Street, in front 
of the post-ofBce. 

He meant to stay in the village over night. As 
he walked up the street, the scent of the hay, and 
of the flowers in the gardens, was sweet in the 
air, and the long shadows stretched across the 
road. He met a pretty girl in a blue dress. 

He decided to stay a little longer than he had 
thought at first. He finally staid six weeks, 
without deciding upon it at all. 

He had a pastoral ta^^ ; and he liked the hay- 
making, and th©-wild roses and elder-flowers, and 
the June weather. 

He adapted himself to simple country-life with 
a good deal of adroitness, — a faculty he always 
liked to exercise. He was so comfortable that he 
began to feel virtuous ; and he was so disgusted 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 29 

with the results of his wild, careless life, that he 
thought he was sorry for their causes. 

And then he fell in love with the girl in the 
blue dress. 

Her name was Ruth Fairfield. She was pretty, 
and she was twenty years old ; but she was the 
most innocent and undeveloped girl of twenty 
that Dinsmore had ever seen, and he knew how 
to appreciate innocence. 

There was, however, a serious obstacle to his 
love-making. Ruth had parents who objected to 
Dinsmore, not from any great acuteness in judg- 
ing him, but from a kind of habitual prejudice 
that was none the more rational for hitting its 
mark so squarely in this particular case. 

Dinsmore felt that it was very irrational, and 
that he was an injured man, that if such a saving 
influence as Ruth's had been earlier in his life — 
Ah ! well, it is an old story. He made an effec- 
tive bit of pathos of his hard case, and was pro- 
foundly touched and impressed by it himself. He 
was quite as sentimental as he was cynical. 

And all this time he was meeting Ruth even- 
ing and mornings along the quiet meadow-road. 
He dazzled her not less with his past wickedness 



30 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

than with his present goodness, and, most of all, 
with his repentance, and the power of her influ- 
ence. 

The end was what any one might have foreseen. 

Ruth slipped out of the front-door one night, 
and went down the gravel-path to meet her lover 
at the gate. 

There were rows of sweet, old-fashioned flowers 
growing beside the path. They may have caught 
at her skirts as she passed, as if they begged her 
to stay ; but she never stopped. She met her 
lover at the gate, and went away with him ; and 
she came back no more. 

After her marriage, very little was known of 
Ruth in Unity. There were a few who held that 
she was a fortunate woman, leading a gay life ; 
and there were others who hinted that she was 
unhappy, and neglected by her husband : but she 
never came back to confirm either report. 

At the end of ten years she died, leaving a 
little daughter. Her parents were also dead ; and 
her sister Eunice had inherited the farmhouse, 
and the marshy and stony acres, as well as Ortho- 
dox principles and convictions of duty. She 
wrote, offering to take her sister's child. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 3 I 

Dinsmore answered, gracefully enough, that he 
had decided to place his little Alice in a convent ; 
and that was a bad blow for Miss Eunice. 

But, as it chanced, Alice did not remain in the 
convent. She said afterwards that she com- 
plained to her father that she was not amused ; 
and, as he could understand this cause of com- 
plaint very well, he came and took her away. 

By this time Dinsmore had become more rest- 
less in his habits.- He seldom staid long in any 
place ; and he kept Alice with him, travelling. 
from city to city. 

For some time she thought this very delightful, 
and her father the most charming of men. 

When she was about sixteen he ceased to be 
quite so charming to her. He found that as she 
grew older she was becoming a serious embarrass- 
ment ; and, at that time, he had other embarrass- 
ments. He was the same Cornelius Dinsmore 
who came from England disgusted with himself. 
That winter they spent some time in Boston ; and 
there Alice met with some cousins .who remem- 
bered Ruth, and were inclined to pity her daugh- 
ter. Alice resented the pity ; but the cousins 
were good people who did not discover this, and 



32 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

finally they carried their compassion so far as to 
offer her a home. This time Dinsmore did not re- 
fuse. He considered and accepted, and left Alice 
with regrets that she found it hard to believe. 

It was also hard to remain with the cousins. 
By and by it was impossible. There is still a 
tradition among them, of a saucy speech she 
made, concerning Good Samaritans, and her own 
preference for the priest and the Levite. 

She was a wilful girl, and at last there was a 
quarrel. Then some one remembered Miss Eu- 
nice, and her neat house, and her Orthodoxy, and 
her sense of duty ; and Alice was sent to her 
under something that was very like disgrace. 

Nearly four years after, Kenneth Lawrence saw 
her first on the river-bridge. 

Lawrence heard Mrs. Hardy's version of this, 
and he smoked and meditated over it on the 
piazza after dinner. 

*' I am afraid I allowed her to gossip," he con- 
cluded. " On the whole, I think I shall allow it 
again. Tea and gossip make a mild escapade, 
but I doubt if I can manage any thing better 
under present circumstances." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 33 

He sat looking at the house opposite. Its 
blinds were closed at every window. It might 
as well have worn a mask. 

The street was vacant as far as it could be 
seen. A black cat slept on the wall across the 
road. 

Lawrence thought he would return Miss Dins- 
more's book. He went into the house, and came 
out again with the book in his pocket, and his 
hat on his head. 

He found the place without difficulty. Indeed, 

he had recognized the house Mrs. Hardy described 

as one of those he had passed in his morning walk. 

He went in at the gate, through the spring 

shadows of the elms. 

He pulled the bell at one side of the white 
door, but it responded only by a faint rattling. 
The wire was evidently broken. He rapped on 
the door, and in a moment heard steps coming 
through the hall. 

It was Miss Fairfield who opened the door. 
Lawrence assured himself that he was not dis- 
appointed. 

She received the book and his explanation with 
a kind of bashful ceremony. 



34 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

When he had finished, she said, " You are Mr. 
Lawrence, I presume ? " 

Lawrence acknowledged his identity. 

She said, still shyly and stiffly, " I presume you 
don't know that I used to be acquainted with your 
father, Mr. Lawrence. Won't you step in .? " 

Lawrence expressed his pleasure at doing so 
in a way that made him wonder if her embarrass- 
ment was contagious. 

This was evidently one of those forgotten 
friends of his father. 

She was an old gentlewoman ; but she had so 
little occasion for formal civilities in her daily life 
that they had acquired the evident air of disuse. 
Lawrence imagined them as metaphorically laid 
away in lavender, and that, when they were 
brought out of their seclusion, they showe(i sharp 
folds, and smelt of the sweet herb. He also had 
lived in a kind of solitude ; and he had a whim- 
sical suspicion that his own manners were of the 
same sort, but probably more distinctly wrinkled, 
and less fragrant. 

He talked with her for half an hour in her dim, 
cool parlor. She let enough light in to let him 
see that the furniture was covered with haircloth. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 35 

The sofa was very slippery : he remembered fall- 
ing off such a sofa when he was a child. 

He was on the alert, as usual, for the oddness 
of the coincidence which brought him there. 
What had he to do with his father's acquaint- 
ance of thirty — no, it must have been nearer 
forty — years ago? "It is not fate, of course. 
Fate is dead, or out of fashion ; but it is a nine- 
teenth-century imitation." 

He had been there some time when Miss Fair- 
field left him for a few moments, and returned 
with her niece. 

Lawrence saw that the young lady was prettier 
than he had observed the day before. 

She hesitated before shaking hands with him 
after her aunt's introduction. He made a mental 
comment : " That is not shyness. It may be 
aversion, but I think not. It is a different sort 
of social training. She is more sophisticated 
than Miss Fairfield and I." 

He had to make the most of his impressions, 
and of a view of her profile, as she sat between 
him and the window ; for she would not talk 
much. 

Her figure was pretty^ light and slim but 



36 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

rounded : her waist and throat and arms, and 
her small wrists, were all round. 

Once or twice, as she turned her face toward 
him, he was surprised by a look oi alert intelli- 
gence around the eyes and mouth ; but what she 
said was very ordinary, and without any appear- 
ance of forces in reserve. 

"■ I don't think she is a distinct individuality, or 
even a type," he said, walking up the hill to the 
village. "In any case, I did not mean to make 
a study of her. I meant to be " — Here he 
allowed himself one of the privileges of soliloquy, 
and paused to select his term. Finally he decided 
upon " chivalrously obtuse." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2)7 



III 



" It was the time of roses ; 
We plucked them as we passed." 

Thomas Hood. 

Time dragged with Lawrence for two or three 
days after this. His eyes did not get strong as 
quickly as he could have wished, so that he was 
unable to read or write much ; and, in conse- 
quence, he very soon got to the end of his 
resources. 

He walked a good deal, and smoked on the 
piazza, and listened to Mrs. Hardy. 

At last he thought of fishing in Unity River ; 
and, though it was not lively sport, it was a way 
of passing time. 

As he became used to the country, he usually 
struck across the meadows to the river, instead 
of following the road. This gave him an unfamil- 
iar back view of the houses he passed. On the 
side of a hill, on the outskirts of the meadows, 
he noticed an apple-orchard in full bloom, a mass 



38 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

of pink and white, on the upward slope. He 
caught glimpses of a roof he did not recognize 
above it. The orchard was divided from the 
meadow by a tumble-down wall. 

The second day he saw, from a considerable 
distance, a blue spot between the wall and the 
nearest trees. As he came nearer, this proved to 
be a young lady, who looked up from the book 
she was reading, and nodded to him. He recog- 
nized Miss Dinsmore. 

When he came back she was still there, rather 
to his surprise ; but she did not look up. " That 
is not indifference : it is determination," he re- 
marked to himself. ** She detests me, no doubt ; 
but she is determined not to go out of her way 
on my account." 

He saw her there so often within the next few 
days that he gave up the determination theory as 
rather violent. He was resolved not to be violent 
in his speculations regarding her. 

As the days went on, they came to speaking, 
and then to chatting, across the wall. 

By the time the apple-trees were out of blos- 
som, their acquaintance had progressed consider- 
ably. Lawrence was fully accustomed to sitting 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 39 

on a flat stone in the lowest part of the wall, and 
talking comfortably with Alice under a tree not 
a yard away. 

At first he was constantly expecting her to re- 
venge upon him the circumstances that attended 
their first meeting. 

" Of course, when she stopped to think it over, 
she iound out how awkward it was. Then she 
was enraged. And she is a paragon of magna- 
nimity if she ever forgives me her own behavior. 
She never will. She is sure to take it out of me 
sooner or later ; and, on the whole, I wish she 
would begin. The delay makes me nervous." 

But she failed to show any of the expected 
malice, and he began to give up this idea also. 
There was only one thing remarkable about her, 
and that was the number of ideas she forced him 
to give up. 

Their acquaintance was greatly assisted by that 
old acquaintance of Miss Eunice and his father 
which had been dust and ashes so many years. It 
gave him a position almost as friend of the house, 
if he had chosen to take advantage of it ; which, to 
do him justice, he did not. It gave Miss Eunice 
a mild, steady interest in him ; and it added the 



40 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

freedom of her confidence in his individual char- 
acter, to the freedom which the simple code of 
her native society and training recognized as 
natural and almost inevitable. 

After he had advanced so far as to call at the 
house, he ventured upon certain attentions more 
conspicuously offered to the younger lady. He 
felt a slight awkwardness in this character that 
was piquant to him. His summer's amusement 
was turning out to be of an unusual sort. 

He found that there was a presentable light 
buggy to be had in the village, and there was also 
a horse, — a large-boned animal of a faded, dis- 
couraged-looking sorrel tinge. In Unity most 
of his race were called colts for an astounding 
number of years, and Lawrence feared that an 
animal which had earned the mature title must be 
tottering on the verge of decrepitude. 

He tried him, and found that though his gait 
was peculiar, — a rising of the hind-quarters that 
was startling, and an indescribable movement that 
seemed to portend a back-spring into the buggy, 
— his pace was bearable. 

Lawrence asked Alice to drive with him next 
day ; and, as she accepted, they went then, and 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 4 1 

often afterwards. They travelled pleasantly a 
good many miles behind the faded sorrel. 

Other days they rowed on the river. Sometimes 
they landed at a great rock, some distance up the 
stream, and did not go back until the shadows 
were long, and the air cool. Moonlit evenings 
they walked, sometimes up the village hill, some- 
times down to the causeway. 

It is needless to say that by this time Lawrence 
had found out that Alice was a very charming 
and companionable girl. 

All this came about naturally enough. Their 
acquaintance was as lacking in the characteristics 
of a flirtation as it was in those of a permanent 
friendship. 

Lawrence accounted for it. " She accepts my 
attentions because I am the only available young 
man. Upon my word, I don't mean that in an 
objectionable sense. So far, I have been discreet : 
I have been exemplary. I have not even specu- 
lated as to whether she is a coquette ; but I sup- 
pose I may assume that she likes the society of a 
civilized being, and it is not gross vanity to in- 
dulsre the idea that I am a trifle more civilized 
than her fellow-townsmen." 



42 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

The days had gone by until it was June. There 
were warm suns and soft west winds, white ox- 
eyes in the green fields, and pink wild-roses by 
the hard smooth roads. 

Lawrence found it warm one morning walking 
down the long hill from the village. From the gate 
he saw Miss Fairfield's upright, angular figure at 
the sitting-room window ; and he crossed the grass 
at an angle to speak with her. She sat framed 
in by the June roses that wreathed the window. 

Lawrence chatted from outside. He stood 
resting his elbow on the sill, and fanning him- 
self with his hat in the other hand. 

" It appears to be warm," said Miss Eunice. 

He could understand that the heat was little 
more than an appearance from that cool, half-lit 
room. He could see the whole dim, neat inte- 
rior. There were braided mats on the floor. 
There were several high-backed chairs with cush- 
ioned seats, and one great chintz-covered rocking- 
chair. There was a group of portraits arranged 
with geometrical precision between the windows 
at the end of the room. 

" Yes, the weather has arrived at that," said 
he. *' It has made attempts for some time." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 43 

"It has been dry too," said Miss Eunice, going 
back to her sewing. " Luther Jones says he does- 
n't know when he has seen so much of the river- 
meadows out of water." 

" I see that your meadows are high and dry," 
said Lawrence. 

" I don't know as it makes any difference to 
me," thoughtfully. " I have let them to the 
Hunts this year. So I don't know as I need to 
care. And I don't know but I do," she concluded, 
with a touch of the vernacular. " What are you 
and Alice going to do to-day } " 

'' I thought of going up the river, if Miss 
Dinsmore likes the idea." 

" She'll go," said Miss Eunice. *' She is around 
the kitchen-door, or the wall, somewhere." 

"May I go and find her.?" 

"I don't know why you shouldn't." 

Miss Eunice was accustomed to this free inter- 
course of young people. She knew not the duties 
of a chaperone, and her strict conventionalities 
were all for the guidance of the married portion 
of the community. 

Lawrence found Alice in the doorway of the 
kitchen, sitting on the threshold, and reading a 



44 A^ HONORABLE SURRENDER, 

book. She looked up, and said " Good-morning ; '* 
and Lawrence sat down on the stone in front of 
the door. It was a large stone, flat but irregular. 
The shade of the house fell on this side ; and half 
the aisles made by the orchard-trees were dark, 
half bright. The nearest trees were cherries, and 
their boughs were full of red-and-white fruit. 

" Shall we go up the river t " said Kenneth. 

"By and by," said Alice. ** There's the long 
day." 

She had laid her book beside her on the door- 
sill. Lawrence took it up, and turned the pages. 

*'Why do you never talk about what you read, 
Miss Dinsmore } You let me make an exhibition 
of myself as much as I like, but I never get at 
any of your opinions." 

*'Perhaps^ I haven't any," said Alice. "No, 
that is not the reason. Some one told me young 
ladies must not talk about books." 

"Do you like to have those young-lady rules 
made for you ? " 

" I don't know that I like rules, but I like 
customs. It is always fascinating to me to do 
what other people are doing, no matter what 
it is." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 45 

** What an exaggerated regard for convention ! " 
said Lawrence. ** Are you sure it isn't your 
originality in disguise ? " 

" Perfectly sure. You had better make the 
most of it. It is a rare bit of frankness. I sup- 
pose I am really very much like a sheep. I like 
to jump fences when the others do, but not at 
any other time. Now, there are a great many 
people walking around this world, and pretending 
to be lions and eagles and serpents, when they 
know they belong with the flock, and follow the 
bell." 

"This looks uncommonly like originality," said 
Lawrence ; ** but I suppose I am to take your 
word for what it is." 

" I am a tame and conventional soul," said 
Alice. *' You will not need to take my word for 
that, if you know me long enough." 

''Well, I should never have suspected you of 
it," said Lawrence. He saw his mistake instantly. 
She sprang up with a flushed, angry, helpless face, 
and went into the house, without looking at him. 
He thought, " Now I am in a muddle, and en- 
tirely my own fault," and followed her. She was 
standing by the opposite window. 



46 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" I beg your pardon, Miss Dinsmore," he blun- 
dered awkwardly. ** Upon my word, I didn't 
mean any thing of the sort." 

She turned around and faced him, her color 
going from red to white, and back again. 

" If you did not mean it, why do you beg my 
pardon } And if you were not thinking of any 
thing of the sort, how do you know what I am 
thinking of .-^ " she demanded subtly and unjustly. 
He looked extremely foolish, and she watched him 
keenly as he stumbled over some further explana- 
tion. By and by she laughed ; and he felt sub- 
missive enough to join her, if he had dared. She 
relieved him by going to a closet, and taking out 
a little basket, which she handed him. "There, 
go and get some cherries," she said. " We will 
take lunch, and stay at the rock as long as we 
like." 

Lawrence went out with the basket, thinking, 
" How a humiliation renews one's youth ! I feel 
about six years old." 

When he had filled his basket with cherries, he 
came back, and stood looking in at the open door. 
The room was long and low, and the whjjfe floor 
was flecked with sun and shadow from the oppo- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 4/ 

site windows looking to the east. At one end, 
a great brick-oven gaped like a dusk-red cavern ; 
at the other, a dresser held milk-pans shining like 
mirrors, and old-fashioned shapes of blue-and- 
white ware. 

Upon a chair, Alice had left her hat and a 
scarlet shawl. 

.She came and took the basket of glistening 
cherries from him, and poured them into a yellow 
bowl that stood on the table. 

Then she disappeared through a narrow dooi 
beside the dresser, and came back with a loaf of 
bread which she set upon the table, and cut with 
a long knife. The slices fell upon each other 
white as snow. 

She went away a second time, and brought a 
half-loaf of cake. Then she began to pack the 
basket, putting in yellow cake and white bread, 
and bright and dark -red cherries. 

Lawrence watched her with a sense of very 
great charm. He had never wasted any senti- 
ment on his lack of pleasant domestic associa- 
tions, but it certainly was a long time since he 
had seen any one cut bread. 

"There, it is ready," she said, fastening the 



48 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

cover ; "but I must go and tell aunt Eunice that 
we are going to stay all day." 

Lawrence waited for her in the doorway. 

She came back around the corner of the house, 
carrying a Japanese sunshade in her hand. He 
took the lunch-basket from the table. 

She followed him into the house, and put on 
her hat. He took up the scarlet shawl. 

" I don't want it," she said. 

** You will," he rejoined concisely. 

"Then I'll put it on. Oh, no! don't shake it 
out. Fold it, — this way." 

She took it out of his hands, and folded it 
lengthwise like a scarf, and flung it around her 
shoulders. 

"That has a very pretty effect," said Lawrence. 

"That is why I put it on," she said honestly. 

As she stepped out on the flat stone, she raised 
the sunshade, and tilted it over her shoulder. It 
had a light-blue lining with silver cranes flying 
over it, and its bamboo canes radiated like a halo 
behind her head. 

They walked across the orchard, out of the solid 
shadow of the house, into the shadows of the 
trees shortening toward noon. 



AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 49 

They crossed the wall where it was scarcely a 
foot high. As Alice sprang down, Lawrence re- 
leased her hand, and said, " Will you let me say 
something patronizing ? " 

" Why, of course, when you tell me of it 
beforehand." 

'* I liked your telling me why you put the shawl 
on. It is as pretty as the color." 

They walked on a few steps. Alice said, '' You 
would have known, whether I told you or not." 

He laughed. " Is that the Puritan conscience } 
We all have it in this climate." 

"No, it is not the Puritan conscience. It is 
common-sense, I suppose. If you begin by 
thinking too well of me, — I mean, that I am 
franker, or cleverer, or somehow nicer, than I 
really am, — you will end by not thinking as well 
of me as I deserve ; and I should not like that." 

They discussed each other's personalities freely 
in those days. When they were not walking or 
driving, they almost always went to the rock. It 
was a great table-like rock, jutting out into the 
stream. On the shore-side, there was a belt of 
willows around it down to the water's edge. As 
Lawrence had said, they did not talk much of 



50 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

books. They talked of persons ; and, if this 
meant talking of themselves, the circumstances 
certainly encouraged egotism. 

They had the river to themselves, and the 
meadows to themselves. Sometimes, on especial- 
ly calm, sunny afternoons, it seemed as if they 
had the world to themselves. 

Lawrence heard a good deal of her antecedents 
from her own point of view. 

He saw that she regretted her gay, undesirable 
father, and her varying life. 

At first he was a little surprised at this ; though 
he thought his surprise unreasonable, and perhaps 
a little brutal. Why should she not regret her 
father } Still he was a trifle annoyed. 

The next day she told him a story about a 
bunch of violets that some one gave her, and 
how she was in disgrace with her father in con- 
sequence. Somehow she made him understand 
that the violets were a solitary instance. 

He said to himself, that there was no better 
guardian for a young girl — even for her sim- 
plicity and ignorance — than a man of the world. 

Finally his ingenuity constructed a theory that 
was pleasant to him. He decided that she was 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 5 I 

regretting an imaginary father and an imaginary- 
life ; and that, though the barriers which had 
closed her in had been no better than a sham 
conventionality and even a sham respectability, 
still they were barriers, and they had closed her 
in, and had even screened her sight from what 
was without. 

He was certainly a fastidious man ; and fastidi- 
ousness seems to be a sort of texture of the soul 
that may perhaps be worn off by a mental pro- 
cess, comparable to the way in which a delicate 
skin becomes weather-beaten : yet, upon the 
whole, it may be doubted whether such treat- 
ment is more beneficial to the moral than to the 
physical complexion. 

It may be added, that, in her intercourse with 
him, Alice had recognized this trait, and, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, acted upon it. 



52 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



IV. 



" Who, after a dry lifetime, . . . 
Was flooded with a passion unaware, 
His whole provisioned and complacent past 
Drowned out from him that moment." 

Mrs. Browning. 

The next time Lawrence came to Fairfields, he 
overtook Alice half-way down the hill. She was 
walking on the right-hand side of the road, and 
carrying her sunshade tilted down to keep the 
afternoon sun out of her eyes. She raised it 
enough to make her nod and smile visible to Law- 
rence, and then she let him take it from her. 
He held it in his left hand, and they walked and 
talked together in its shade. 

Lawrence saw that she had more color about 
her than usual. Presently he made out that she 
had on a pale-pink cotton dress. Her broad- 
brimmed hat and her belt were black, and she 
wore drab lisle gloves that fitted so closely as 
to show the shape of her finger-nails. She was 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 53 

certainly a beautiful girl. She had not only her 
charming figure, and her clear profile, — which was 
of the delicate, spirited type that is acknowledged 
as distinctively American, — but coloring perfectly 
blooming and delicate. Her fair skin was entirely 
without blemish, except perhaps a few freckles 
directly under the eyes. 

The light-pink tinge in her cheeks was trans- 
parent and variable. Her hair was of that sunny 
light brown that is scarcely darker than blonde. 
Her gray eyes were very dark, and had, in certain 
lights, an actual tinge of olive. The lashes were 
thick even on the under lid. 

" Miss Dinsmore," said Lawrence, " I have 
brought an idea down with me." 

She laughed outright: "Why, you have always 
brought an idea with you, — except twice. Once' 
you had a headache ; and once you said you had had 
too much speculative analysis, — whatever that is." 

" This time my idea is a surprise, — surprise at 
my own ignorance," said Lawrence. " It is aston- 
ishing how near you can live to a thing, and man- 
age to be entirely ignorant of it. Do you know 
I was never in one of our New-England villages 
like this before ? " 



54 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" I don't think that is very strange," said Alice. 
'' I know wherever we went, papa and I, we used 
to find people who had been over half the conti- 
nent, without stopping within fifty miles of their 
own city." 

" That is not exactly my case," said Lawrence. 
*' I don't know much about any large portion of 
the continent, except from the map ; and geogra- 
phy is not my strongest point. I have never 
taken a very liberal allowance of holidays, and 
several years ago I fell into the habit of going to 
the Adirondacks summers. When I don't go 
there, I usually go to the sea. I am like a cat for 
habits." 

*' Then, why is it so surprising that you have 
not been in villages like this ? " 

**Ah! that is not the real surprise, after all. 
The surprise is in the impressions I get, or rather 
in the negative impressions, — those I don't get. 
You know, there is an ideal New England floating 
through our literature, and I suppose I had crys- 
tallized some notion of a rural community from 
that. Now, I not only fail to find it, but I fail to 
find any thing at all like it. If it ever existed, 
I should say that some vital principle had died 



AN- HONORABLE SURRENDER. 55 

out of it." They walked on a few steps. When- 
ever he dropped a sentence in this way, Alice let 
him alone, knowing that he was safe to take it up 
again within five minutes. 

He went on, '' Not the industry, for if there is 
a hard-worked people on the face of the earth ! — 
And yet I haven't seen a single farm that is quite 
kept up to the old idea of neatness and trimness." 

" I dare say that is because so many of the 
young men go away," said Alice practically. 
**Very few of the farmers keep their sons at 
home. And then a great many of the meadow- 
farms are owned by foreigners, Irish principally, 
but there are a few Germans and Swedes. Old 
Mr. Hunt says he don't know but what they get 
full as much out of the land as any one can, but 
they don't do it in the old:fashioned way." 

**Ah! there is another difference," said Law- 
rence. '' I suppose there is no driving the conceit 
out of a Yankee ; but there is a tradition that 
some of it used to take refuge in his belief in his 
church, and his town, and his farm. At present 
his church is dead ; and his vanity and his energy 
between them manage to drive him out, and leave 
the farm to the old folks, and the town to the 



56 AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

young women. I don't know exactly what be- 
comes of them : I haven't gone into that branch 
of the subject." 

"Well," said Alice, laughing, ''you seem to 
have gone far enough into the rest of it. A great 
many of the young women go away too. They 
teach whenever they can manage to get the train- 
ing, and, after the training, the school. When 
they can't, they go to the large factory-towns. 
I think those who stay at home take music- 
lessons, and get their fashions from Boston, and 
make their parties as genteel as they can." 

"That is fatal," said Lawrence. "The old, 
sour, sad, Puritan dread of pleasure was enough 
of a foe to social enjoyment ; but I really believe 
their modern dread of vulgarity is worse." 

Here they turned in at the gate of " Fair- 
fields." Alice took Lawrence into the parlor, 
where she opened windows and loosened shutters, 
letting long yellow rays and small bright dots 
and points of light into the dusky room. 

Then she laid her hat on the table, sat down 
in the rocking-chair, and began to pull off her 
gloves. 

Lawrence sat on the sofa with a certain degree 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 57 

of precision : he was a person of conventional 
attitudes. 

" Upon my word, their society is becoming a 
curious spectacle," he said. "Their old bond and 
reason for being, Orthodoxy, is dead ; and in its 
place all sorts of crazy hallucinations and super- 
stitions have sprung up, and modern rationalism 
with them, — the brutish sort, that penetrates in 
its strange, stolid way, without the aid or the en- 
lightenment of scientific training. And their old 
social customs, such as they were, are dead. And 
the young men all leave town, and the young 
women play the piano." 

Alice laughed, as she laid her gloves on the 
table. "I shall have to quote Mr. Hunt to you 
again. He would say, 'You appear to have 
studied up consider'ble.' " 

"I wonder," said Lawrence, ''whether you will 
allow me to say, that I have been thinking of all 
this in relation to you t " 

Alice passed one hand over her face from the 
eyebrows down. She ended by pushing her hair 
off her right temple and behind the ear. 

" What people have to bear, whether they like 
it or not " — She stopped abruptly, then went 



58 A AT HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

on again : " I suppose I never shall forget the 
first year, even if I have a chance to forget 
any of it. Thinking it could not last, and find- 
ing out that it could and it did. 

"Probably there is not much meaning of any 
sort, to you or any one, in hearing that I have 
been here since I was sixteen. Well, to me it is 
tragic : it is all the tragedy there is." 

Outside, the afternoon breeze was rising, and 
the swaying shadow of a bough broke up the even 
bars of sunlight on the floor. From the hall 
came the sound of the clock, tick-tack, tick-tack. 

" Not that the time has been so long, though it 
has been long enough : I could bear that. And 
it is not being so lonely : it is the years I am 
losing. I could spare them out of my life, — life 
is long, — but I am losing the only part of it that 
is worth having. There is no use in telling me 
that that is a narrow view, a childish view, that 
I should cease to think so, I know I shall cease 
to think so : that is exactly what I am afraid of. 
When I cease to think as I do now, I shall cease 
to be a girl. I am losing my girlhood. If I could 
have just the simple, ordinary life that other girls 
have ! I like ordinary things. What I hate is 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 59 

being placed in an exceptional position. I am 
beginning to be afraid of growing unlike other 
people. 

" If I could go away and be happy, be amused, 
as other girls are, — no more ! " 

She stopped again, and the clock ticked loudly. 
Lawrence changed his position uneasily. 

" I think I must be crazy to go on like this to 
you," she said finally ; *' but I have been so 
lonely, it has lasted so long " — She broke off 
suddenly, and rushed past him out of the room. 

She made very little noise, but the effect upon 
Lawrence was as violent as if every door in the 
house had suddenly clapped together in the wind. 

He paced the room nervously twice, thrice. He 
flung himself into one of the straight-backed, 
inhospitable chairs. 

The sunshine lay upon the floor, the branch 
swayed before the window. The clock ticked, but 
Lawrence did not notice it : he was busy with an 
idea that was more insistent than the clock. He 
was sitting with his back to the door. After sev- 
eral moments some one touched his sleeve. He 
stood up suddenly, and faced Alice. " Of course 
I don't mean to go on with this sort of thing," 



6o AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

she said pleasantly. " Suppose we go out on the 
river ? " 

Her face was flushed, but her eyes were bright 
— brighter than usual. 

She was quite honest and natural in recovering 
her spirits quickly : it was a gift due to youth 
and her Celtic blood, but it was also due to a 
wise little rule she had. '' Never make people 
uncomfortable," she reasoned sensibly : " there is 
nothing more fatal — except to make them ridicu- 
lous." She was not more artful in intent than a 
great many persons who have not her adaptable 
faculty ; but her moral mechanism was rather a 
complex affair, and when she wished to please, 
she almost always had a variety of reasonably sin- 
cere aspects of her nature from which to choose. 

On this day they went down the river. 

There the willows grew on the bank, close to 
the shallow stream. Wild-roses clung to them ; 
vines clothed the rough bark with their shining 
leaves. A ribbon-like strip of sky was visible 
overhead ; and sunbeams came slanting through 
them, and fell upon the water. 

Alice took off her hat ; and some of these 
golden lights struck into her thick, soft hair. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 6 1 

Lawrence rested on his oars ; and there was the 
sound of their dripping, and of the wind in the 
belt of willows, — a sound like a loud whisper. 

"There is something more than familiar in 
this," said Lawrence. " It gives me that per- 
fectly unaccountable feeling of having heard and 
seen it all a long time ago, — a hundred years 
ago, in some other existence." 

''There is another feeling I sometimes have," 
said Alice, ''the reverse of that. I don't know 
whether I can put it into words, — a sort of fore- 
cast of association, a certainty that some particu- 
lar moment, not an important moment, not a 
moment when any thing happens, will stand out 
in my memory, distinct, so I shall seem to be 
having it over again. Is that at all intelligible .'* " 

"It must be," said Lawrence; "because, al- 
though I don't know the sensation, — if I under- 
stand you rightly, it is a sensation, — I am sure I 
catch your meaning." 

Alice did not answer : often they did not an- 
swer each other directly. 

In a few moments they came out upon the open 
stream. The blue sky was over them, the river 
beneath. The swampy green of the meadows 



62 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

was broken here and there by a dash of vivid 
contrasting color, — the scarlet of cardinal-flowers 
far off, and the blue-fiags near at hand in the 
reeds. 

Almost out of sight were some farmers, piling 
up a "hay-rigging" drawn by oxen. 

'*Do you look at the horizon when you are dis- 
contented, restless .-* " asked Alice suddenly. 

"Always," said Lawrence, "even when it is the 
sharp edge of a roof." 

"I wasn't looking for the horizon then," Alice 
explained : " I was looking for Dave Jones. 
Hear him singing * Marching through Georgia'? 
He never sings any thing else." 

They did not go much farther down the river. 
When they came back the ox-team had driven 
away ; but there were still one or two figures 
moving against the sky, and the Jones boy was 
still singing somewhere. 

They landed just above the willows, and walked 
diagonally across the meadow to the orchard-wall. 
Lawrence was abstracted : his idea was bothering 
him again. 

In crossing the wall, Alice met with a slight 
mishap. She was usually very light and sure- 



AN- HONORABLE SURRENDER. 63 

footed : but in springing down, she somehow lost 
her balance, and stumbled headlong. And Law- 
rence lost his senses. 

He caught her passionately in his arms. 

Lawrence found himself in the predicament of 
a man, who, playing with a fancy, is caught by a 
genuine passion. Hitherto his life had suited him 
remarkably well. He was a young man, who was 
so far in advance of his years as to be able to 
value his youth ; he was a clever man, with a deli- 
cate and critical knowledge of his own cleverness, 
that was in itself a preventive of vulgar conceit. 
The world presented itself to his view chiefly as a 
field for study, and this serious but irresponsible 
view of life was but one among his delicate and 
peculiar privileges. He had always a whimsical, 
agreeable consciousness of being not altogether 
as others are. To these advantages went certain 
substantial drawbacks ; and chief among them was 
the very commonplace lack of money that fre- 
quently drags genius and youth and impulse, and 
other beautiful things, into ways in which they 
must be extremely surprised to find themselves. 
It did not, however, cause Lawrence inconven- 



64 ^^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER, 

ience. His income was sufficient even for liis 
tastes, which were exact and fastidious rather 
than luxurious. 

But, though it was not a present inconvenience, 
it was capable of presenting itself as an effectual 
barrier in his way. Marriage, for instance, though 
by no means impossible, would be quite undesira- 
ble for him. The artistic temperament habitually 
chafes under the homely restraints of economy, 
and it is a robust love that endures better than 
the artistic temperament. Now, there was little 
that was robust in Lawrence's whole highly 
strung nature ; and in this case, as in others, he 
was happily aware of the extent of his capabili- 
ties. 

Had these. conditions remained unaltered, his 
method of dealing with his unlucky little fancy 
would have been extremely simple and direct. 
Remedy, the morning express bound east. And, 
if he could not have been called master of the 
situation, at least he would have been fairly re- 
signed to the knowledge that the situation had 
mastered him ; for, to his mind, there would have 
been no alternative. 

But now there was an alternative. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 65 

" If I accept my uncle's legacy " — he said to 
himself, at his window in the gray morning twi- 
light. He had restlessly paced his room half the 
night ; he was at it again in the early morning, 
not knowing that his uneasy steps woke little Mrs. 
Hardy, who was restless in her room, thinking, 
** I wonder what she has been doing now ; " but, 
even if he had known it, he could scarcely have 
resigned himself to be a more quiet neighbor. 

His mood was not tragic, but it was thoroughly 
uncomfortable. "As the case stands, I have 
made a thorough fool of myself," he admitted 
irritably ; and it was not an agreeable reflection. 
He came down to breakfast in an exceedingly bad 
temper. 

The astute person who sat opposite, and poured 
the tea, watched him through her pale eyelashes, 
and talked much, faster than usual. He wished 
her at the antipodes. "If I accept my uncle's 
legacy" — he said to himself, walking up the 
sunny village street after breakfast. He paused 
still at the phrase. All the intellectual currents 
of his nature set so strongly against busy Far- 
borough and the successful iron-works, active 
prosperity, and respectable boredom. What ! 



66 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

overturn, for this mere passion, his whole well- 
ordered plan of life ? Resist when youth and 
passion were so strong ? The dilemma was very 
nicely balanced. 

He walked north and out of the village, follow- 
ing a road that wound deeper and deeper into 
Unity woods, a straggling, irregular growth of 
pines. Lawrence is no more susceptible to asso- 
ciation than the unsentimental American should 
be, yet to this day he cannot walk through scanty 
pine-woods in June without meeting the ghost of 
his old perplexity and struggle. 

Something in the sight of the straight trunks, 
the dark-green needles against the blue overhead, 
the light-brown needles thick upon the ground 
underfoot, yes, and the pleasant spicy smell of the 
warm air, still revives the day when he came to 
choose between so strong a desire and all that his 
reason had valued for years. It was a very genu- 
ine passion, and he acknowledged it — in the 
woods. He also acknowledged how gravely his 
decision must affect Alice, and this from the prac- 
tical, unsentimental point of view. He flinched 
as he thought of her loneliness, her discontent, 
her hatred of the dreary, isolated life she led. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 6/ 

How to leave this young girl to her lonely fate ? 
" Am I a coward ? " was his way of putting it, 
and he endured a gentlemanlike spasm of disgust 
at the possibility that he was. 

He had walked farther than he knew among 
the pines; and when he turned back to the* vil- 
lage, he found the road long, and the sun directly 
and persistently over the crown of his straw hat. 

Mrs. Hardy met him at the door ; but she could 
make nothing of his looks, and was forced to con- 
tent herself with observing that his shoes were 
very dusty, and the nape of his neck most bril- 
liantly sunburnt. 



68 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



V. 



"A letter may alter the plans we arranged 
Over-night for the slaughter of time." 

Owen Meredith. 

Alice Dinsmore considered herself in many 
respects an unfortunate girl, but she always ac- 
knowledged that she was fortunate in having a 
very charming friend. 

This was a lady whom she met on one of the 
last journeys she took with her father. 

Her name was Celia Crosby : she was many 
years older than Alice, and she had been twice 
married and twice widowed. Her history, as 
commonly reported, was rather romantic. 

It was said that her first marriage had been 
signally unhappy. The handsome young man 
whom she devotedly loved proved himself dissi- 
pated and worthless, and treated her at first with 
neglect, and afterwards with positive brutality. 

At last there was a worse quarrel or graver 
cause than usual ; and the handsome scapegrace 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 69 

went away, and his young wife went back to her 
relatives and her early home. He never came 
back again, but within a year news of his. death 
came instead. 

And then Celia conducted herself in a most 
unreasonable manner. She mourned with blind 
and unaccountable persistence, shut herself in 
with her grief, and declared that she could never 
again believe the world or share its joys. 

All time passes, and this passed for her. She 
was still a young and very handsome woman : 
and, as she came out from her seclusion, she 
found that she had not lost the capacity for 
enjoyment ; and she thought the world was much 
the same as ever, except that she laughed at it 
more, and on the whole people liked her bet- 
ter. 

She travelled a good deal in those days ; and 
she found time to read books, and her fellow- 
creatures as well ; and the development that her 
experiences had begun in her character became 
more apparent. 

Then came Richard Crosby, who loved her, and 
followed her with a dog-like fidelity that she 
laughed at, and liked, and told him was useless. 



70 AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

But it was not useless, as he knew ; and at last 
it prevailed, and he won Celia, if not her love. 

They spent some happy years together ; and, 
when he died, he left her a pleasant memory, as 
well as his substantial fortune. Celia said that 
he had saved her faith in human nature, which is 
perhaps as exalted praise as man need desire. 

When Alice first knew her she was already 
near middle age ; but she had kept much of her 
beauty, and nearly all of her charm. Her grace- 
ful figure had grown a trifle heavy ; but her dark- 
auburn hair, her fair complexion, and her brilliant 
eyes were almost as beautiful as ever. 

She affected no youthful graces ; but she cer- 
tainly had exquisite taste in dress, and she wished 
Alice to call her Celia. 

She liked Alice at first for a resemblance she 
fancied she saw in the young girl to her younger 
self. As she forgot the reason, the liking re- 
mained, and friendship followed. 

Alice had visited her once or tv/ice, — Celia's 
absence in Europe had prevented more frequent 
meetings, — and they wrote each other long let- 
ters. 

On the morning succeeding the events recorded 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. /I 

in the last chapter, Alice received a letter with 
the familiar post-mark. Celia usually spent her 
summers in a little village on the Hudson. 

Many years ago fashion flowed away from the 
place to the sea. 

Within a few years, though fashion did not 
come back, some of the people did. They were 
old residents, and with them some new people 
who either were, or wished to appear, exclu- 
sive. 

There is a certain dainty, indefinable charm 
about an unread letter. Open it, and the spell 
vanishes : that which is always falls short of that 
which might be. Alice thought something of this 
sort, as she walked back through the village under 
the maples that lined its one long street. 

She congratulated herself that she was not 
eager to open the letter. ** It gives me a pecu- 
liarly delightful sensation, to defer a pleasure 
within my grasp, just for the mere caprice," 

The maples lifted their heads toward the blue 
sky, with something that looked like an air of 
sturdy pride and pleasure in their vigorous life. 
The sunlight fell between their pointed leaves 
upon the road. 



72 AN HOXORABLE SURRENDER. 

There is all of summer in the shadows cast by 
a maple in full foliage. 

Alice watched the lights and shadows with 
pleased eyes, and she was pleased with the con- 
ceit of the unread letter : indeed, she was in a 
mood to be pleased with all things that summer 
morning. 

Her gayest moods were usually of the sort 
the Scotch call "fey," and were apt to be followed 
by a dull, unreasonable depression ; but this sane, 
sweet cheerfulness was something altogether dif- 
ferent. The world was beautiful, life was good, 
nothing was impossible. She felt that it was 
good to be alive, and it was glorious to be young. 

**Now, if this were my usual mood," she 
thought, "people would consider me a very good 
girl, which they certainly do not at present. The 
question is, am I uncommonly good, or only un- 
usually comfortable .'* an excellent digestion and 
high animal spirits, or amiability and all the vir- 
tues } " She walked briskly, and soon became 
conscious that the morning was warm as well as 
beautiful ; and it was with an agreeable sensation 
just short of fatigue that she passed under the 
drooping^branches of the elms at the gate. The 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 73 

front-door was unlocked ; and she opened it, and 
went from the dark, cool hall into the cooler 
parlor. 

The room was closed and dark : it was not 
damp, hardly close ; but it had a reserved, exclu- 
sive atmosphere of its own, which accorded with 
the darkness and the quiet, and even with the 
dignified hair-cloth sofa upon which Alice im- 
mediately sat down. It was a peculiarly hard, 
smooth, and slippery sofa ; and its surface was a 
little worn here and there, and very much inclined 
to prick the unwary hand that rested upon it. 

Alice watched the long rays that fell through 
the chinks of the blind, with indolent enjoyment. 
Then it occurred to her that the sensation of 
deferring a pleasure had lasted long enough ; and 
she admitted a little more of the clear morninsr 
light, and opened Celia's letter. 

Celia was a pleasant letter-writer, and certain 
mutual peculiarities had made her letters particu- 
larly pleasant to Alice ; but now, as she read," she 
had a new, unfamiliar sense of dealing with some- 
thing foreign to herself, or at least to her present 
mood. '' It is very singular," she said. "■ I used to 
think and speak in the very way that Celia does, 



74 A^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

and it was not imitation but a real likeness ; and 
now " — She left the sentence unfinished, and 
took up the letter. Celia sketched some of her 
neighbors slightly, yet distinctly enough : Alice 
made little mental pictures of them as she read. 
There were great attractions for her in one of the 
pictures. 

"' Harry Ashley is a fortunate young gentle- 
man, who has life upon as delightful terms as the 
Prince Charming of a fairy story. His father 
acquired a wonderful fortune very quickly, and he 
also built a wonderful country-house here : you 
should see it, and its grounds, and its flower-beds 
with shaded borders ; but no matter about them 
now. Very soon after the house was finished, he 
died ; and his son and heir is my fortunate neigh- 
bor. He is here at present overlooking his estate, 
and I think he fancies himself a little bored by 
that and other things in this troublesome world." 

Alice paused with a little sigh of envy. She 
wondered how life might look to a young man 
who had the freedom of the world and a fortune 
before him. 

The description went on to a greater length, 
and made young Ashley seem a pleasant fellow ; 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 75 

but at the time she did not pay much attention to 
that. Celia closed by urging Alice to visit her. 

Alice looked perplexed, as she slipped the 
closely written sheets back into their envelope. 
She drew them out and re-read them, and looked 
up to laugh and say, " I believe Celia wants me to 
come and amuse her fortunate neighbor." 

She walked twice across the room, and consid- 
ered, keeping the little perplexed frown on her 
face; then she came back and sat down. "And 
perhaps it would be best for me to go." 

She sat there a long time in the quiet parlor, 
and she gave Celia's invitation a good deal of 
serious thought. 

She did not tell herself that her reluctance to 
leave Unity was strange, for she was honest 
enough to acknowledge that it was not strange ; 
but she did not name her reasons quite clearly 
even to herself. She did not say that she cared 
deeply for her power over Lawrence, but she did 
say that she would like to put it to the test. 

" I shall like to tell him I am going away," 
she said confidentially. *' He will be so aston- 
ished, and an astonished man is so awkward, and 
then" — She dropped the sentence, and put 



'j6 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

the thought into a little dark corner of her brain, 
whose arrangement was not very clear to herself. 
And all at once she felt a hot wave of color rise 
to her temples ; and she hid her face in her hands, 
and took them down again as she remembered 
that there was no one to see whether she hid her 
face or not. '^ You are very nice," she said, ap- 
parently to the arm of the sofa, ''but this will 
not do at all ; " and she added, " Decidedly, I shall 
go and amuse Mr. Ashley." 

And then she ran up-stairs in very high spirits, 
wrote a pretty letter to Celia, and sealed it with 
great promptness and decision. Her high spirits 
continued during the rest of the day : she laughed 
and talked more than was usual with her, and 
sang as she went about the house. 

"And, after all, I am a little sorry to go," she 
owned, with a feeling of virtuous candor at con- 
fessing so much. She had read somewhere, ** We 
can never say of any thing not wholly evil, ' This 
is the last,' without regret : " and these summer 
days had not been wholly evil ; far from it, they 
had been very pleasant. Yes, she was sorry to 
go : she would own it frankly. 

At five o'clock she went to her room, and made 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 77 

a very careful toilet before the sunlight faded 
out of its west windows. She put on a black 
dress of a clinging fabric that suggested the 
curves of her tall young figure ; little frills of 
black pointed lace lay against her white throat 
and arms, and in her hair was a tea-rosebud. 
And she wore one rose in her breast, a large pale 
flower fully blown, — a trifle too much so per- 
haps ; but, if it had lost the freshness of the bud, 
it had gained instead a fragile charm peculiarly 
its own. It was an image of beauty trembling on 
the verge of dissolution. 

When she had finished dressing, she leaned 
over her little white-covered table, and touched 
that portion of the small glass that reflected the 
sweet, fresh color of her cheek. " I am very good 
to go away," she said saucily : " Mr. Lawrence 
ought to be extremely obliged to me." 

All her veins tingled pleasantly ; and the little 
thrill of gratified vanity made her walk in a 
dainty, stately way, as if she wore high-heeled 
slippers and long gloves, and trailed brocades and 
velvets down, the narrow farmhouse stairs. She 
went into the sitting-room, and met a whiff of 
fragrant wood-smoke, and mingled with it a cer- 



y8 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

tain spicy odor very acceptable to a young woman 
who was practical enough to possess a particu- 
larly good appetite. She dropped her dignity, 
and ran into the kitchen very briskly. The room 
was full of a blue haze. *' O aunt Eunice ! " said 
Alice : " gingerbread ? " 

*' Burnt," said Miss Eunice briefly : ** it usu- 
ally is." She drew a pan out of the oven, and 
shut the door with a snap. Alice began to cough 
a little in the smoke, and crossed to the open 
door. ''And such is life," she moralized to the 
pale-yellow hollyhock that stood as high as her 
shoulder just outside. "We either burn our cake 
or our fingers, or else our neighbor's fingers. 
Probably burning the cake is most serious ; for, 
whatever happens, we must have tea." 

She looked back, and saw her aunt's spare 
figure, and the low familiar room, through a blue 
shifting cloud ; and she looked before, and saw 
the orchard with the dusk half-way up the cherry- 
trees, and the lingering sunlight reddening in 
their tops. 

" There is a letter for you on the table, Alice," 
said Miss Eunice, lightly scraping the under side 
of a brown loaf: "Jimmy Hunt brought it," she 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 79 

continued, as Alice took up the envelope and 
went back to the door. The light was percepti- 
bly dimmer now. 

Alice looked across the orchard-wall, and saw 
a large, dilapidated straw hat going up the hill. 
The departing Jimmy was probably beneath it, 
but he was not otherwise visible. 

She tore the envelope apart, and read : — 

Dear Miss Dinsmore, — I am unexpectedly recalled 
to Boston, and, worse still, am obliged to leave at once. I 
regret deeply that I am unable to see Miss Fairfield and 
yourself, and express in person my sense of obligation for 
your kind hospitality during this pleasant summer. Pray 
accept my very sincere thanks, and pardon the way in which 
I am forced to offer them. With many regards to Miss 
Fairfield and yourself, believe me 

Yours sincerely, 

Kenneth Lawrence. 

By this production Mr. Lawrence had distin- 
guished himself, after twenty-four hours of inde- 
cision. 

Alice began to read, smiling slightly at Jimmy's 
remarkable hat ; and when she had finished the 
note, the little smile was still on her face. In- 



80 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

deed, she had some difficulty in getting rid of it : 
by some unexplained process, it seemed to have 
been frozen. She seemed to have been always 
standing in the open door, to have been always 
motionless, always smiling. 

At last — it was about five minutes later — 
she went back into the room : " Aunt Eunice, 
this note is from Mr. Lawrence. He has gone to 
Boston. And please read it yourself." 

Miss Eunice turned sharply ; and Alice felt 
absolute terror at sight of her thin, flushed, as- 
tonished face. However, she was happily slow of 
speech ; and before she had found her scattered 
wits, there was time to lay the letter on the table, 
and get out of the door and across the orchard, 
out of reach of discussion for the present at 
least. 

She sat down upon the wall, and undertook to 
think the matter out quietly. The numb dulness 
of mind had passed away, and she felt capable of 
clearer thought than ever before. 

Strangely enough, she scarcely glanced at Law- 
rence's conduct ; she gave his motives no thought 
at all : they were of no immediate importance. 
But it wa§ of immediate and vital importance to 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 8 1 

save her own pride and self-respect, to prove to 
herself that she had not allowed vanity to place 
her in a false position, that she had not been 
ridiculous, that she was not contemptible in her 
own eyes, 

She examined her own conduct coolly, even 
harshly. Certainly there were mistakes that 
might have been avoided, there was one moment 
of weakness that brought the blood to her cheeks 
as she thought of it : and yet, viewed calmly, 
there was nothing in strikingly false taste ; she 
had not misrepresented herself, she had not been 
ridiculous. 

She paused with a sigh of relief. 

All at once a scorching wave of shame and 
anger seemed to rush over her : she trembled 
from head to foot, and buried her face in her 
hands. "/ to be shamed when I thought so 
highly of myself! / to be slighted! / to be 
baffled when I thought I had power ! " 

A faint, bruised, tea-sweet smell rose from the 
bosom of her dress. She looked down, and saw 
the little yellow centre of her rose. She had 
brushed every petal from its slight hold. She 
sprang down from the wall, and raised her skirts 



82 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

slightly as she felt the damp grass. She shook 
them a little, and walked toward the house. " I 
don't know that it would improve matters for me 
to have rheumatism or a fever," she said, drying 
her little worn boots at the kitchen-fire. 

It seemed to her that Miss Eunice was abnor- 
mally quiet at the tea-table. 

" She is not a veiy talking woman," she thought 
nervously and ungrammatically : " yet it must 
come sooner or later, and I would rather have 
it now." 

At last Miss Eunice spoke across the tea-tray : 
"Alice, is it your fault that Kenneth Lawrence 
has gone away .'' " 

" No, it is not my fault," said Alice mechani- 
cally ; and there the matter rested until they had 
finished tea. When they rose from the table, 
Miss Eunice went over to Alice, and laid a hand 
on each of the girl's shoulders, — a most unusual 
act for her. Alice was the taller by half a head ; 
and the older woman's worn, sallow face looked 
up into hers. 

"Alice, you are very handsome," she said dis- 
tinctly. 

" Yes, aunt Eunice," with modest decision. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 83 

A faint color rose in Miss Fairfield's thin 
cheeks. " Alice, have you used your good looks 
to trick my old friend's son ? " 

Alice's nerves had been strained to a serious 
and uncomfortable point for two mortal hours, 
and at this her facile Celtic nature swung to the 
other side of the balance. 

The corners of her mouth twitched, and a dim- 
ple showed in her cheek. 

Her aunt released her instantly, and went out 
of the room with her lips very tightly pressed 
together. 

Poor Miss Eunice ! the question certainly had 
its pathetic aspect, and it was hard upon her that 
it should have been met with a laugh. 

It was early when Alice went to her room, and 
there was a half-grown crescent hanging in the 
western sky. 

She sat some time by the window, but not in a 
sentimental mood. Afterwards she lighted her 
lamp, and began to turn over some of her belong- 
ings in a bureau-drawer, in a comfortable, absent- 
minded way. Suddenly she came upon the little 
scarlet shawl, and — it is hard to say why associa- 
tion should linger so strongly here — an actual 



84 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



physical pain seemed to contract her heart. " It 
is not enough that I cared nothing for him," she 
cried passionately : " it is intolerable that I am 
obliged to say I cared nothing." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 85 



VI. 



** How many goodly creatures are there here ! 
. . . O brave new world, 
That has such people in't ! " 

The Tempest. 

Celia Crosby stood at a window on the sunny- 
side of her house. It was shaded by Venetian 
blinds ; and, looking through their little green 
bars, she saw a cloudless sky, a glittering river, 
the freshly clipped lawn and in its centre a great 
oval of geraniums dropping pink and scarlet 
petals on the sod. Alice came around the corner 
of the house, in a white dress and without a hat. 

"Guess what I have here, Celia," she said, 
holding one hand behind her, and shading her 
eyes with the other. 

"Tuberoses," said Celia. "You should stand 
farther off to make guessing fair. And come out 
of the sun, careless child," she added, opening 
the blind. 

Alice stepped over the sill, and sank into a low 



S6 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

chair. " I am not particularly afraid of the sun," 
she said. " I don't feel as if his tremendous 
majesty was bent on such small game as myself 
just at present." 

*' Oh ! I was not thinking of any thing so 
trivial as sunstroke," said Celia ; "but fancy en- 
during life for the next week with a sunburnt 
complexion." 

Alice was breaking her tuberoses from their 
stalk : the room was filled with the deathly sweet- 
ness. ''You'll put them in my hair, Celia," she 
said coaxingly, leaning her head toward Mrs. 
Crosby, and holding out a handful of dead-white 
flowers and pale-pink buds. Her hair was drawn 
up to the top of her head, and twisted loosely in 
a way that suggested portraits of ladies of the last 
century. Celia set the flowers in the edge of the 
soft, heavy coil. 

She turned her face aside as she did it : her taste 
was for delicate, faint-scented flowers. '* How can 
you wear them, Alice t The odor is intolera- 
ble." 

*' It is luxurious, and I like luxuries. When I 
come into my fortune, you will see me trailing 
ever so many yards of velvet after me, and wear- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 8/ 

ing diamonds in the morning probably. I think 
my taste is becoming thoroughly false." 

"Puritanic influences in the rebound," sug- 
gested Celia. 

" Yes," said Alice, nodding gravely, and leaning 
back in the sloping chair. She added, '' But this 
is a land of civilization. This morning I cut my 
hair across my forehead, and bought a pair of 
slippers in the village. See ! " she extended an 
arched, slender foot. 

Celia laughed pleasantly. *' I'm sorry to differ 
with you, my dear, but I should never call that 
slipper civilized." 

Alice allowed the little high-heeled monster to 
hang from her foot, and swing back and forth. 
"It is not what people call sensible," she ad- 
mitted. 

" Hardly," said Celia. 

" Probably I should not like it if it were. I like 
absurd things : I believe I like to be absurd, my- 
self. I think I am becoming hopelessly silly, 
Celia. I don't know what I can have done with 
my cleverness." 

"Ah ! well, it is one of the best things in this 
world to know you had it once," said Celia. 



88 A AT HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

** But I am not so stupid that I can't tell when 
you are laughing at me," objected Alice. She 
looked with languid admiration at Celia's delicate 
dress, that suited so well her dark hair and fair 
though no longer fresh complexion. Alice looked 
from the trailing skirts to her own white wrapper. 
" Query, why is one's morning dress perfectly 
creditable before one o'clock, and entirely objec- 
tionable afterwards } I suppose I must dress," 
she said. 

*' Don't say ' must ' in that serious tone," said 
Celia. " I have banished that word as far as next 
winter, at least. It doesn't suit the present sea- 
son." 

" How delightful you are, Celia ! " sighed Alice, 
clasping her hands behind her head, and allowing 
the slipper to dangle from her foot. 

" That is very pretty, but I am afraid you only 
mean that doing as you like is delightful." 

" It is nice to have one's own way, certainly," 
said Alice. She was looking down, and did not 
see the kind, admiring eyes with which Celia 
looked at her. Celia was a lover of beauty in her 
own sex ; and she admired Alice from her white 
arms crossed behind her head, and the little bright- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 89 

brown locks on her forehead, to the pointed toe 
of her sHpper, with a fine, discriminating admira- 
tion. 

" I think your Harry Ashley is a very provok- 
ing person," said AUce suddenly. 

Celia laughed : " Has that any thing to say to 
having one's own way, Alice } " 

Alice raised her eyes from the slipper. "Of 
course : but that is why I like talking with you ; 
you don't require all the links of the chain. But 
this is plain enough, surely : you rouse all my 
curiosity by a description, and the subject of it 
quietly goes to New York the day before I arrive. 
That is not having my way at all." 

" Yes ; but he is not my Harry Ashley, or I 
should have kept him here for your especial bene- 
fit. I suppose he will remain a week or so in the 
city." 

"He must be insane — in such weather as 
this," said Alice indignantly. "I don't think I 
care about seeing him" — slipper swaying rapidly 
to and fro. 

Celia, who had been looking out of the window, 
turned her head with a smile. "Then I think 
you had better go up-stairs." 



go AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

"Why?" immediately sitting upright. 

"Because he is crassing the lawn at this mo- 
ment." 

Alice started to her feet without the slipper, 
which made the best of an opportunity to fall off. 
The little clock struck the half-hour after two, as 
she ran up-stairs. She had left her shoe on the 
floor ; and Celia dropped an open novel over it, as 
Harry Ashley crossed the threshold. 

"Welcome back, Harry: when did you ar- 
rive .'* " 

Alice heard what was said, from where she 
stood in the upper hall. 

"Thanks. I arrived at 9.30 this morning. 
New York with the thermometer in the nineties 
isn't exactly the thing." This in a vigorous, 
young voice, with the fresh, likable sound in it 
that wins its owner the privilege of talking all 
sorts of nonsense to sensible people. 

"An agreeable voice," said Alice, still at the 
head of the stairs, — "a very agreeable voice, and 
I am critical in the matter of voices." She was 
not quite like other girls, after all ; for here she 
went off into a theory she had about voices in 
general, where perhaps most young women would 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 9 1 

have been thinking of the particular voice that 
had suggested her train of thought. 

She came back to the stairs, and fastened her 
dress as she stood. " I suppose he has finished 
talking about the weather by this time. Celia 
never encourages the thermometer sort of con- 
versation." 

Celia always passed by the minor ills of life in 
a discreet silence. 

He was not talking about the weather. 

*'Is this the way you treat your light literature, 
Mrs. Crosby t " 

"What can he mean by that .'' " thought Alice. 

"Ah ! " with the rising inflection : "now where 
do you keep the young lady t " Harry had taken 
up first the novel, and then the slipper under 
it. 

" How do you know she is a young lady t " said 
Celia. " It may belong to some ancient person 
like myself." 

He turned the slipper over, and looked at it 
critically. " You wouldn't wear a heel like that," 
he said, shaking his head with a quizzical look ; 
" and the ancient person would be rather likely to 
break her neck if she tried it." 



92 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Celia smiled at his distinction. " You may give 
it to me for the present, Harry." 

*' Not at all," he said coolly, putting it in his 
pocket. " I mean to have the pleasure of putting 
it on Miss Cinderella's foot." 

Just then Alice came in at the open door. 
Celia presented Mr. Ashley, who looked frankly 
and pleasantly unconscious of the slipper. 

Alice looked at Celia's young neighbor with a 
good deal of curiosity. He was a young man of 
twenty-two, looking perhaps a trifle younger, 
rather tall and broad-shouldered, fair but not 
blonde, with brown hair, a good-looking rather 
boyish face, and a pair of very blue eyes. 

They got on well together from the very first. 
Afterwards she could not recall much that was 
said ; but she remembered that Celia made every 
thing easy, and that they all got on very well. 

Harry told Alice about the fortunes of the 
little town, — how the people went away, and how 
they had lately come back again, a little for the 
sake of avoiding crowds, and a good deal for the 
sake of doing something new. And he was kind 
enough to add that it was not much of a bore, 
after all. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 93 

Alice raised her eyebrows ever so slightly, and 
thought, " I wonder what you can know about 
being bored by any thing ? " 

Celia smiled and said nothing. She never made 
others feel young, or small, or inexperienced. 

But they both liked the nonsense that he 
talked, and liked his way of saying it, and his 
ready laugh, and his blue eyes. 

When the little clock struck five, it surprised 
everybody ; and Harry rose to go. 

Alice held out her hand with a little imperti- 
nent air, and said, "My slipper, if you please, 
Mr. Ashley." 

Harry hesitated with a laughing, reluctant look, 
and finally took the little shoe out of one of his 
coat-pockets, and laid it across her palm with a 
grand bow. 

After he got outside the door he soliloquized 
about it, not aloud, *' Sometimes that sort of thing 
is possible, and sometimes not ; and it is very 
well for a fellow to know which is which." 

Alice went and sat down on a little low stool 
beside Celia, and rubbed her cheek against her 
friend's hand with a pretty, cat-like motion. 
"Celia, he is a delightful boy." 



94 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" He would be extremely obliged to you for say- 
ing so," said Celia. 

" Ah ! but he will never know it. I shall make 
him think himself quite a venerable person, and 
he will be sure to like that." 

Harry Ashley was a favored mortal, whom every 
one liked. He was not remarkable for any un- 
usual gifts, — was not remarkable in any way 
when you considered upon it ; and there was even 
a possibility that when he was thirty years old he 
might be as commonplace as the rest of the world: 
yet at twenty-two he was actually charming to 
every human being who approached him. 

He had grown up in the face of every good 
fortune, had in fact been petted to an unconscion- 
able extent, and yet he was quite unspoiled. He 
had "done Europe" in a three-months' tour, and 
had yet managed to escape any sort of supercili- 
ousness ; and, though he professed to be a little 
bored by most things, he could never disguise his 
thorough good-temper with himself and the world. 
Men invariably liked him. He was not a fop, 
nor a snob, nor a prig, nor any thing else the 
average man dislikes ; and he was frank and gen- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 95 

erous and manly, and on the best of terms with 
life. 

Diplomatic mothers liked him as well as they 
liked the reputed amount of his income ; their 
daughters favored his youthful good looks, and his 
blue eyes, and his boyish, nonchalant manners, 
which still had a certain fine native deference 
toward women, and kindliness toward all. 

Doubtless there were flatterers and hypocrites 
among those that followed him ; but his good luck 
never put them to the test, and he had the 
shrewdness not to be badly tricked by any of 
them. He took the world as it came, with hearty 
good-temper, and enjoyed it better than he ever 
knew. 

On coming down to breakfast next morning, 
there was a little heap of letters on Celia's plate. 
On two of the envelopes the handwriting was 
feminine, — the one large, sloping; and angular, 
the other much smaller, round, and upright. The 
remaining letter was addressed in a really beauti- 
ful masculine hand, that seemed to express much 
decision. Alice had no letters, and sipped her 
chocolate tranquilly as Celia read. Celia looked 



96 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

up from her third letter with two little wrinkles 
on her white forehead. 

"They are all coming at once," she said pathet- 
ically ; ** and I don't think the whole State is large 
enough to hold them comfortably." 

Alice put her cup down. " I would like to sym- 
pathize with you, but that sounds too promising. 
Who are they, Celia ? " 

"Alfred Wilson, Juliette d'Etreville, and Au- 
gusta Winters. You have never met any of 
them.? No.? Well, Juliette d'Etreville is a 
woman of society: she is twenty-six, unmarried, 
ambitious. Her ideas are all conventional, and 
her actions perfectly independent. Mrs. Winters 
is assistant principal in a girls' school. She has 
advanced ideas about women, indeed about all 
things, but they will not hurt any one : she is a 
very nice little woman. Mr. Wilson was popular 
in society twenty years ago, and he is more popu- 
lar and more in society than he was then. Now, 
how I am to reconcile Juliette to Augusta Win- 
ters, or Augusta Winters to either of the others, 
is more than I dare to think." 

" I will protect Mr. Wilson from Mrs. Winters, 
and Mr. Wilson shall protect me from Miss 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 97 

d'Etreville," said Alice. "I feel that I am going 
to be terribly afraid of her. May I see her hand- 
writing, Celia } " 

" Yes ; but there is nothing very original about 
it. It is ugly and fashionable," said Celia, pass- 
ing the letter across the low dish of bright ver- 
benas in the middle of the table. 

"That is just what I am afraid of," said Alice. 
"I don't fear anybody's originality." 

" Look at this address," said Celia, passing Mr. 
Wilson's letter across the table. '' I never can 
understand how it happens that characterless 
people so often write that beautiful, forcible hand. 
And the most puzzling part of the question is, 
that it comes by nature. I don't think it can be 
acquired." 

'' There is your large way of looking at things," 
said AHce, breaking a small crisp roll. **You 
always discuss people in classes." 

** Unfortunately I have to discuss them in a 
cottage this time. And I must harmonize Juli- 
ette d'Etreville and Augusta Winters." 

'* It is a pity you cannot put them all in a 
novel, Celia. Miss d'Etreville and Mr. Wilson are 
society models, — good for conversation. Mrs. 



98 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Winters gives the Ideas, always with a capital 
*L' And I dare say we could find a hero — Mr. 
Ashley would do for one of the unheroic sort.'* 

" Who is the beautiful heroine } " said Celia, 
smiling. 

" I am the beautiful heroine," said Alice archly. 

Celia laughed : " You have the frankest vanity 
of any one I ever knew. What shall become of 
you — in the novel, I mean?" 

Alice was examining a small Japanese person- 
age in her plate. **That is the great feature of 
the modern novel. Nothing becomes of the char- 
acters : they dissolve in a sort of mist." 

Celia's visitors soon appeared. Shortly before 
noon one day, arrived a small, blonde, fatigued 
gentleman, one of those neutral-tinted beings 
who look much the same at twenty and at sixty. 
He was actually about half-way between the ages 
at which he was destined to look almost equally 
neutral, tired, and blonde. 

At lunch he developed a sprightly manner, and 
retailed various bits of spicy society gossip to 
Celia. Celia was not the sort of woman to whom 
gossip is particularly acceptable, but she indulged 
Mr. Wilson : it was her role to indulge. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 99 

After lunch he revived still more, and addressed 
much of his conversation to Alice. 

" The fact is, I represent a past generation," he 
told her, smoothing his mustache with the very 
touch of twenty years ago. The gesture escaped 
being ridiculous just as narrowly as the smile 
escaped being melancholy. " I am a sort of 
wreck, left on the shore by the wave going out." 

Alice discovered that he was fond of using 
this expression. He repeated it frequently, and 
apparently with much relish. "I dare say it 
would be more decorous, at my age, if I could 
find the world dull ; but I don't, you see. I know 
there is nothing the matter with the world. It is 
I who am out of tune, worn out, at fault gener- 
ally. I'm a mere wreck," concluded the dapper 
little gentleman cheerfully. Alice wondered 
whether he would not like to be contradicted. 

He went on chattering in lively little phrases, 
and repeating his half-humorous, half-melancholy 
regret. 

At three o'clock the day after, Celia's carriage 
brought the ladies from the station. 

They certainly had not travelled together, 
though they arrived at the same time. 



lOO AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Miss d'Etreville was tall and blonde, plain of 
feature, of large muscular frame, with broad shoul- 
ders and tapering waist, — what her dressmaker 
considered a very fine figure. 

She wore a handsome, neutral-colored travel- 
ling-dress, not at all dusty or disarranged ; had a 
confident, impressive manner, and displayed large, 
brilliant teeth when she talked. 

She went to her room almost immediately, say- 
ing frankly that she must sleep. She did not 
even profess to have a headache. " I want to be 
perfectly fresh for the evening," she said to Celia : 
" I know you mean to have some nice people here, 
and I must get up my looks in the mean time." 

Mrs. Winters was of a very different type. She 
was a small woman in a dusty black dress : she had 
a thin, brown face, wide at the brows, narrow at 
the jaw, and with a considerable space between 
the bright, dark eyes. She declined rest, but ac- 
cepted a cup of tea ; and she told Alice the whole 
history of her life, on the shady side of the piazza. 

She said that her youth had been a series of 
struggles for bread, for education, for social recog- 
nition. She had married — she did not say un- 
happily ; had been early widowed, thus thrown 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 10 1 

again upon her own resources ; had struggled on, 
had sewed, taught, written, worked early and late ; 
had earned and saved slowly and painfully, for the 
college course that had been her young desire. 

She broke down in health under studies and 
hardships, lost her scanty capital when it was most 
needed, finally found friends and a position that 
would support her, gave up the higher education 
and the medical diploma of her ambition, and, from 
the foothold she had gained, was trying, with her 
pen and her voice and her small means, to influ- 
ence the great nation and the great world for her 
sex, and to rouse her sex to struggle for its rights. 

She confided all this to Alice in half an hour's 
acquaintance ; yet she was not vulgar, nor even 
positively ridiculous. She had an eager, flutter- 
ing, constrained manner, and was plainly of New- 
England birth and training, having the brown 
skin, vivid eyes, and lighter hair, which indicate 
the darker strain of Puritan blood. 

Alice listened to her with kind, well-bred atten- 
tion. As she predicted, she had been rather over- 
whelmed by Miss d'Etreville ; and she found Mrs. 
Winters's deprecating confidences something of a 
relief. 



102 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



VII. 



" I am in love with this green earth, the face of town and 
country, the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security 
of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here." Elia. 

Miss d'Etreville's prediction proved entirely 
correct. Celia had some very nice people in her 
parlors that evening. 

Miss d'Etreville herself came dovi^n-stairs in a 
costume of cream-color and scarlet, amazing to 
behold in connection with the wearer's yellow- 
blonde physique. ** There is the advantage of 
having no complexion to speak of," she remarked 
calmly to Celia. " No color is particularly be- 
coming to me : but I have the freedom of them 
all, if I like ; and I do like." 

She always spoke with cool, matter-of-fact 
frankness, that was little less astonishing in 
effect than her dress. This assured young wo- 
man was, in her own circle, almost a social power ; 
though she was unmarried, had an absurdly small 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. IO3 

income, and was absolutely without beauty or 
the soft arts of fascination. 

It was wonderful to see how women feared and 
conciliated her, and what a circle of young men 
were always ready to be amused by her cool, 
direct speech. But it was remarked that she 
succeeded better with the circle than with one ; 
and this suggested a reason why she still re- 
mained Juliette d'Etreville at the comparatively 
mature age of twenty-six. 

This evening she had her usual successes. 

When Harry Ashley arrived, she was at the 
piano, performing with a distinct, brilliant touch. 
Mr. Wilson, who wore an unhappy expression, 
was being eagerly entertained by Mrs. Winters ; 
and Celia Crosby was surrounded by six very 
young girls. 

Harry noticed the soft color of a turquoise- 
blue dress through one of the lace window-cur- 
tains. It could not be said that he recognized the 
color, but it gave him an idea. He crossed the 
room, raised the curtain on the other side, and 
said, "Good-evening, Miss Dinsmore." Then he 
stepped into the window, dropped the curtain, and 
congratulated himself on his acuteness. 



I04 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

"Good-evening, Mr. Ashley," said Alice, show- 
ing a little pink dimple in each of her cheeks. 

Two hours before, she had been preparing to 
put on her black dress in a most melancholy state 
of mind. She did not admit that her dress an- 
noyed her ; but she felt depressed and cynical, and 
uttered some middle-aged regrets that she had no 
pleasure in anticipating the evening, and had per- 
haps already lost her power of enjoying society. 

Then there was a tap at her door ; and Celia 
came in with the turquoise-blue, and a handful of 
pale-pink roses. Alice immediately grew young 
again. She put on the dress, fastened the roses 
in her belt, and danced about her room, humming 
a waltz she had learned when she was twelve 
years old. She was not even afraid of Miss 
d'Etreville. 

Of course, Harry did not know the history of 
the turquoise-blue: he was not even conscious 
of seeing it. He was chattering as usual, behind 
the lace curtain. "Just look at poor Wilson, Miss 
Dinsmore," he said with a suppressed laugh. 
" The look he has on ! You never saw any thing 
like it." 

Alice leaned forward, and looked at the un- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. I05 

happy little gentleman. There was profound 
melancholy in every line of his face : even his 
trim, little elderly mustache had a despondent 
droop. Mrs. Winters was still talking rapidly ; 
her thin hands were fluttering ; her hair, pushed 
off her face, had an excited appearance. 

Alice drew back. ** She is telling the history 
of her life," she said. "She told me this after- 
noon." 

" She told me last winter ; and, if she ever 
tries it again, I shall bolt," said Harry. He 
added, *' It struck me that she might be rather a 
nice little woman, though ; but that is one of the 
things no fellow will stand more than once." 

Harry's little comments never had malice in 
them. Possibly his good-nature was not of a 
kind to endure under trials and discomforts, or 
even advancing years and the petty vexations of 
every day ; but, in his prosperous youth, he was 
the kindliest of mortals. 

Alice looked up at him through her eyelashes. 
"You might go and rescue Mr. Wilson. Bring 
him in here, and let us entertain him." 

"Ah!" said Harry. "But that is one of the 
things I won't stand at all." 



I06 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

'' Hush ! " said Alice. " We must listen to Miss 
d'Etreville's music." 

" I never could listen," said Harry plaintively. 
"The fact is, I'm not fond of music." 

Alice laughed in a way that might have meant 
several things. 

" Oh ! I suppose it is a damaging confession.** 

"Not at all," she said frankly; "but I never 
did hear any one confess as much before. It is 
new and refreshing, and altogether delightful. I 
wish you would keep on saying so, a great many 
times." 

"The trouble is, it wouldn't keep on being 
new," said Harry. 

" What nonsense we are talking ! " said Alice. 
" I always say that, don't you "i If we admit 
it is nonsense, it sounds as if we could be more 
sensible if we liked." 

Soon after, they went out on the piazza. 

There was a great white moon in the sky, that 
threw the slim shadows of supporting pillars on 
the veranda floor ; and a light wind, that rustled 
in the vine hanging from its roof. 

" This is a river breeze," said Harry. " Let 
me get you a shawl." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 10/ 

Miss d'Etreville had left a soft, white wrap 
piled on a chair in a corner of the music-room. 
Harry discovered it, and came back through the 
window with its creamy folds hanging over his 
arm. " I believe this isn't a shawl exactly," he 
said ; *'but it will do, all the same, won't it V 

"Admirably. It is not mine, though. I think 
it must belong to Miss d'Etreville ; and I dare 
say you haven't discovered that it is something 
very magnificent. Can you find the beginning 
of it.?" 

Harry had turned the cloak over once or twice 
in a doubtful manner. 

"This may be a collar," he said. "And, if it 
is, I know what to do with it. Is that right.?" 
fastening the little silver clasp very deftly and 
lightly under her chin. 

It was a very becoming cloak. It fell nearly 
to the bottom of her dress, and around the throat 
was a little ruff of creamy lace that Harry pro- 
nounced a collar. 

" It is right, supposing I am right to wear the 
cloak at all. Perhaps Miss d'Etreville likes walk- 
ing on the piazza. And I was afraid of her 
before." 



I08 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 

"Miss d'Etreville is talking to a dozen peo- 
ple, so she can't have any attention to spare for 
piazzas," said Harry consolingly. "But you can't 
mean that you are really afraid of her ? " 

"Not really afraid of her," said Alice confi- 
dentially; "but I have the most awful terror of 
her back hair, and her long gloves, and the train 
of her skirts, and all the seasons she must have 
spent in society." 

Harry laughed suddenly like a schoolboy, then 
he looked down at her as they walked. His back 
was to the moonlight, and she could not see his 
look, but only the dark outline of his head and 
shoulders. "Why, don't you know you are a 
great deal better off without all these things t " 
he said, with a little instructive manner. Then 
they turned ; and the moon shone full in his kind, 
amused, boyish face. 

" I don't know," said Alice doubtfully, making 
" know " a very long word. " Do you mean to 
say I have been better off in the wilderness t " 

They were getting on so well that he asked 
her, "Would you mind telling me what sort of 
wilderness it is } " 

" My wilderness is about twenty miles this side 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. IO9 

of Boston," said Alice ; " and it is rather more 
than twenty years behind the times in its ideas." 

"You had better advise some of the people 
here to emigrate. That sort of place ought to 
suit them exactly. Rural simplicity, you know, 
and old enough to be rather new. Now, what are 
the principal attractions of the village } " 

" Swamps," said Alice. " Don't you know the 
sort of place } They have three churches and 
two cemeteries, and all the young people go 
away." 

"Oh! not so bad as that," said Harry. "It 
isn't possible, really, now t " 

" It is too possible," said Alice. " It is highly 
probable. It is true." 

"Then tell me something more about it," he 
said. Somehow he felt older, and possessed of 
much worldly wisdom. It was a peculiarly agree- 
able feeling. 

" No, not to-night," said Alice. " Some other 
time." 

She was not disturbed or uncomfortable when 
she thought of Unity. The moon had gone 
under a cloud, and she could see very little ; but 
she felt that the house was large and hospitable 



no AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

behind her. She heard a pleasant hum of voices 
and piano-playing from its windows : she was 
leaning on Harry's arm ; and, as her fingers 
touched his sleeve, she approved of the fine 
surface of the cloth. She was the sort of woman 
who is exhilarated by brushing against a refined 
coat-sleeve or a perfumed dress. 

She felt that the unexplored world was large 
and beautiful around her, and that she was shel- 
tered and amused in an especially pleasant corner 
of it. 

A clock began to strike within. 

*' One, two," she said, counting. *' Three " — 

" Oh ! no," interrupted Harry. " Don't count 
it, Miss Dinsmore." 

''Then I shall go in at once," she said mis- 
chievously. She ran to the window, and stepped 
quickly in. Harry followed with rather an injured 
expression. 

Alice charmed several young men that evening 
successively, not after the manner of Miss d'Etre- 
ville. When she talked with them she looked 
up sweetly and lazily through her long lashes, 
and showed her pink dimples and short white 
teeth when she laughed ; and all this quite natu- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 1 1 

rally, and without deliberate purpose, more than 
the purpose of a kitten following a worsted ball. 

Meantime Harry had been drawn into the cir- 
cle of Miss d'Etreville. He was promptly bid- 
den by her to give an account of himself ; and 
did nothing of the sort, but Hstened to a lively 
and dramatic account of some of her own experi- 
ences instead, and was heartily amused in common 
with the rest of her audience. 

She gave him no undue share of her attention, 
and a young lady's preferences must not be too 
plainly stated ; yet it is certain that at one period 
her aspiring and practical mind had fixed rather 
strongly upon the Ashley estates, not to mention 
their young owner. The young man eluded her 
rather cleverly, however ; and this remarkable 
woman recognized the impossibility, and pardoned 
the defeat. 

" He is only a boy, and I ought to be able to 
manage him," she told herself plainly ; " but I 
cannot, and there is the truth of it — worse luck 
for me ! " And she wisely and magnanimously 
continued to amuse him whenever he came in 
her way. 

Toward the end of the evening, Alice and Mr. 



112 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Wilson were together. The elastic little gentle- 
man had recovered from his melancholy eclipse. 
Alice was a little tired, and was glad to be amused 
without effort of her own. 

His talk was largely a little, chirping, not ill- 
natured, sort of gossip. He was a surface critic, 
who invariably judged his neighbor by the cut of 
the said neighbor's coat. 

By and by the people went away ; and Alice 
went to her pleasant room, and slept soundly and 
sweetly the whole night. 

Hers was an east room ; and, when she woke 
in the morning, it was filled with a warm, ruddy 
glow that had a homely cause. The dusk-red roof 
of the piazza was just below her window ; and the 
sun, shining upon it, sent the sturdy color up and 
through the bars of the blind. 

She lay quietly, with her hands clasped under 
her head, watching the red glow in the white 
room. In those days she had a new, fresh sense 
of enjoyment in every pleasant sight and sound 
that reached her. She had never been so entirely 
contented in her life. Her senses were more 
acute than ever ; but her mental perceptions were 
a trifle less active than usual, and some traits of 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. II3 

her mind were noticeably dulled. She ceased to 
analyze either her own moods, or the character- 
istics of her neighbors. She saw that Mrs. Win- 
ters was eccentric, Miss d'Etreville worldly in a 
particularly frank manner, Mr. Wilson amusingly 
whimsical ; but she failed to dissect any of them 
in the morbid, curious way that had once been 
her habit. 

She was not entirely satisfied with the change. 
" I wonder what I have done with my cleverness," 
she said again to Celia. " Do you suppose happi- 
ness has been the death of it .•* " 

'"A plant that most with cutting grows, 
Most barren with best using,'" — 

said Celia, who was not at all troubled. 

Those were pleasant days. Celia's neighbors 
were prosperous, pleasure-seeking people ; and 
their friendly sons and daughters drew Alice into 
a young, light-hearted circle, such as she had 
never known before. 

They sailed and rowed on the river, walked, 
drove, danced when sensible people said it was far 
too warm for dancing ; went to impossible places 
to see the sun set, and the moon rise; flirted, 



1 14 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

gossiped, laughed, and chattered continually, and 
with the greatest satisfaction in life. 

All the young men — to be sure, there were 
not very many of them — successively admired 
her, danced with her, took her out on the river 
moonlit evenings and cool mornings, carried her 
Japanese sunshade, and talked a good deal under 
its shining ribs. 

A number of nice friendly girls noticed her 
kindly, linked arms with her on lawns and piaz- 
zas, and even volunteered little half-sentimental 
confidences which never met with the expected 
return. 

Nobody fell openly and violently in love with 
her ; few of the girls showed envy of her pretty 
looks : but she was very kindly and generally 
liked, admired, gossiped with, confided in, and 
amused. Harry Ashley followed her rather per- 
sistently ; and she had an honest, frank liking 
for his blue eyes, his boyish good looks, and his 
friendly ways. 

Mrs. Winters was rather a disturbing element. 
She dropped statistics and other solid matter 
upon the usual small-talk of the breakfast-table ; 
and she exploded questions that could by no 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 1 5 

means be answered in monosyllables in the hour 
after noon, when nobody wanted to talk at all. 
She developed a peculiar interest in Alice, and 
showed it in a manner that would have seemed 
like the frankest impertinence, if it had not been 
accompanied by her usual timid, nervous earnest- 
ness. 

One morning she joined Alice on the piazza, 
and plunged directly into what she had to say. 
She was the sort of talker who habitually plunges. 
"Miss Dinsmore, it seems to me that you have 
capabilities, but I wish I could rouse you a little." 

"■ Oh ! please don't rouse me," said Alice ear- 
nestly. " I would so much rather not ! " 

Mrs. Winters looked at her sharply, then wist- 
fully. "■ You will be roused some time. I wonder 
what you mean to do with your life } " 

*'0h ! I have not any objection to telling you," 
said the young lady, in rather an airy tone. '' I 
mean to enjoy myself, — that is first, — and to 
make people like me, and not to grow old for a 
great many years, — and always to enjoy myself." 

Mrs. Winters looked dignified. It was diffi- 
cult ; for she was much shorter than her compan- 
ion, and dignity is largely a physical trait : yet 



lib AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

she accomplished it. '' That is very well to say 
at your age, but do you know what you mean by 
it ? Exactly, how do you mean to plan your life ? 
For instance, do you mean to marry ? " 

Alice shrugged her shoulders, a gesture she 
seldom used. " One does not intend to marry, I 
should say. I might intend not to." 

" Yes ; and, if you do not, what then } " 

Alice looked down at the little brown woman. 

"Dear Mrs. Winters, I really have no inten- 
tions." 

"That is a great pity," said Mrs. Winters. 
"You are precisely the type of woman that in- 
terests me most. You have capabilities, as I 
said before, but no particular talents. There is 
no twist in your mind. Even talent is a twist, 
though it may be a successful one." 

" I beg your pardon, but there are a great many 
twists in my mind," said Alice, laughing. 

Mrs. Winters went on calmly. "And that 
type of man is often a success, but it is the 
woman who interests me. She usually marries ; 
and, when she does not, she is so often a failure ! 
It seems to me that she should be a success, that 
she might be, if she would : but the trouble is 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 11/ 

exactly what you told me just now. She has no 
intentions." 

"Well, I cannot be expected to solve the 
problems of the race." 

" No ; but you must solve the problem of your 
own life," said the other sharply. ** Do you think 
it will be easier when you are thirty years old } " 

Alice felt suddenly small and cold in a large 
space. She shrank away ; and Mrs. Winters, 
looking up, mistook the expression of her face. 

" I am intrusive perhaps, and disagreeable. 
Well, I don't know that I can make you under- 
stand me better. I am a strong-minded woman, 
a person with a hobby. Very well, I do want 
the ballot for my sex ; but first I want other 
things. I want self-respect and self-preservation. 
I want women not to marry as a profession or a 
refuge. I want them to learn to earn their bread, 
and live their lives out honorably and independ- 
ently." She stopped, panting with excitement. 
She seemed a slight creature to deal with the 
large questions of the world. " I love other 
women. That is what makes me what I am. 
No man will believe it, and few women ; yet it 
is true that a woman may love her sex with a 



Il8 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

great passion. It is stronger than the love of 
kin or country." 

The little shabby, voluble creature gained a 
certain nobility as she spoke. Just then they 
passed one of the open windows, and Alice 
looked in, hearing a slight sound. Miss d'Etre- 
ville sat by the window. She was leaning back 
in her chair, a handkerchief with pointed edges 
was pressed to her face, and she was shaking 
in a fit of violent, noiseless laughter. 

Celia came out through the door with a slight 
flush on her fine, sensitive face. '* Come and see 
my begonias, Augusta," she said pleasantly. "I 
want you to see this vase on the east corner." 
She looked kindly at Alice over Mrs. Winters's 
excited hair. Alice looked with an odd, bewil- 
dered expression from her to Miss d'Etreville. It 
seemed to her, that, though Mrs. Winters had 
impressed them from extremely opposite points 
of view, the impression in each case had been 
distinct, while she had merely been chilled for a 
moment by the unpleasant truth that she would 
one day be thirty years old. 

Surely there was a time when she could have 
understood Mrs. Winters before this odd, cloak- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 19 

like dulness came between her mind and outer 
things. Well, on the whole, it was a comfortable 
dulness. 

" There is a woman worth knowing," said Miss 
d'Etreville, who had come out of her pink-edged 
handkerchief. " Celia Crosby, I mean. She loves 
other women, if you like ; but she doesn't bore 
them by talking about it. And she takes them 
to look at begonias." 

Alice looked after the large figure of Celia, 
and the meagre one of her companion. 

" Will you come and take a walk } " she said 
to Miss d'Etreville. She did not feel inclined for 
a personal discussion. 

" Oh ! no, my dear," said the young lady 
languidly. ''You see, I never do take walks. 
I am not an energetic person." She extended 
one foot, — not a small one, — in an embroid- 
ered slipper, and a stocking like a light-blue 
cobweb. 

Alice took her shade-hat from a red-painted 
chair, and went toward the west corner of the 
piazza, flecking some little dust from its trimming 
as she walked. 

At the corner she came upon Mr. Wilson. 



120 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

He looked at her, and her hat, which was not 
of the sort he was in the habit of criticising. 

'* I wonder what you call that ? " he said, re- 
garding the twisted trimming. "■ Isn't it a kind 
of Jacob's ladder t " 

Alice laughed, and put the hat on her head. 

"I call it the trimming of my hat, and I'm 
afraid no angels go over it." 

"No — under it," said Mr. Wilson. 

She made him a little mock courtesy, and went 
down the piazza steps. The bit of nonsense 
brightened her spirits. 

She had never been as happy as she was in 
those summer days. It seemed to her that the 
face of the earth was pleasanter, the skies bluer, 
the sunshine brighter, the air she breathed sweet- 
er, than ever before. 

It was so good a thing to live ! Not one con- 
dition of her life was permanently changed for 
the better. She knew that she must go back to 
Unity, that the long winter and the snows and 
the loneliness were before her, that she had noth- 
ing to rejoice in but the pleasantness of the 
moment, and — but this she never acknowledged 
— that somewhere in her memory was a shadow, 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 121 

a slight, an affront, that would have jarred upon 
her if she had not forced it aside: yet, withal, 
she felt for the first time in her young life the 
conscious joy of living, and her heart was as light 
as a bird. 



122 AN HONORABLE 'SURRENDER. 



VIII. 

" It was a pleasure to persons of colder temperament, to sun 

themselves in the warmth of his bright looks and generous 

humor. His laughter cheered one like wine. I do not know 

that he was very witty, but he was pleasant." _ 

^ ^ ^ Thackeray. 

Alice went around the house into the kitchen- 
garden. This was a tidy place, with gravel-paths 
and trim-kept beds where vegetables and old- 
fashioned flowers flourished in hearty good-fellow- 
ship. Great disks of sunflowers nodded through 
the bean-poles, parti-colored balsams were on in- 
timate terms with the pease, and in the end of a 
cucumber-bed was a tangle of nasturtiums, red- 
brown, orange, and pale yellow. On one side of 
the garden was a wall some eight feet high, sep- 
arating Celia's property from that of her neigh- 
bor. This wall was covered to the very top by a 
vine with shining leaves, and it rose up a living 
green barrier against the sky. *' Gardens should 
always have walls," said Alice, looking up at it 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 23 

from under her hat. " Nobody wants an outlook 
from a bed of cabbages." 

She went over to the wall after admiring it, and 
opened a little wooden gate that led into the neigh- 
bor's territory. She found herself in a lane ; and 
from the lane you looked up to a gray, mediaeval 
pile, whose twin towers rose from the top of the hill. 
This was Ashley Rock, and Ashley Rock was the 
architectural whim of an American manufacturer. 

On this particular morning Alice looked over 
the low wall of the lane, and surprised the young 
owner of the Rock in a meditative attitude on the 
short, dry turf. In fact, he was lying flat on his 
back, with hands clasped under his head. When 
the gate clicked behind Alice, he heard it and 
sprang up. 

"Too bad to disturb you," she said: "why 
don't you bar trespassers out t " 

By this time he was over the wall. " I might 
tie Rex at the gate," he said, laughing. " Rex is 
my dog. He isn't vicious, but he's young, and he 
knocks people down whenever he can. That is 
his idea of a joke." 

" Then, I hope Rex isn't down in the woods : 
that is where I am going," said Alice. 



124 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 

*' Can't say, I'm sure," said Harry. " He roams 
all over the place. May I come — to keep him 
away .'' " 

** * May you ? ' on your own land ! " said Alice. 

" Oh ! I can occupy some other part of my 
land, if you don't want to be bothered." 

" It will bother me a good deal if Rex knocks 
me down," She started down the lane, and 
Harry kept at her side. 

" I should like to know what you were thinking 
about just now," she said, *' There was such a 
meditative air about your elbows. Elbows are so 
expressive ! " 

** ' Out at elbows ' is expressive," said Harry. 
** I haven't gone through the sleeves of my coat, 
have I .-^ " pulling one of them around to look at 
it. " No, I was thinking of something serious, 
though : you were right there," 

They were in the wood by this time. The 
little grove was too well kept and cleared to be 
particularly picturesque ; there was no under- 
brush, no tangle of fern : yet it was a pleasant 
bit of shade, and was upon the sloping bank 
above the river. 

" Suppose you sit down here, Miss Dinsmore," 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 25 

said Harry. " Here " was a little seat between 
two young trees. Harry hung her sunshade in 
the branches, so as to catch the direct rays of the 
sun. Then he sat down on the moss and par- 
tridge-vines, and took off his hat. '* It is rather 
jolly, isn't it } " he said. 

"Yes," said Alice absently. She looked at the 
river through slender trunks of trees, and up at 
the blue sky through the green branches. " Are 
you still serious } " she said, looking down at 
Harry. 

He shook his close-cropped head. *' I was seri- 
ous up there, though, — about my place. I wish 
some Christian would tell me what to do with it." 

"Enjoy it," said Alice. 

Harry gave a quick glance at her. " I'm a 
good deal in the habit of enjoying myself," he 
said frankly ; " but I was thinking about the 
house," looking up at the gray towers. "You 
don't know how it bothers me, Miss Dins- 
more." 

Harry had less real conceit than nine-tenths of 
the discreet persons who slip through a conversa- 
tion never touching personalities ; but, on the 
other hand, he had the cheeriest confidence that 



126 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

what interested him was equally interesting to 
others. 

''What is the matter with the house?" said 
Alice, smiling down upon him frankly, not coquet- 
tishly. 

"■ It is a sham : that is what is the matter with 
it," said Harry. '' It is well enough inside, and it 
is not so bad to look at ; but see the absurdity of 
it. Here is a regular castle, — mediaeval, you say } 
well a mediaeval castle, — set up on the banks 
of the Hudson, of all places in the world ! Of 
course I don't go in for culture, or that sort of 
thing; but — well, I don't like to feel myself a 
snob," the boyish color rising to his temples as he 
spoke. 

" I don't know why you should," said Alice. 

Harry was making a praiseworthy endeavor to 
gnaw his mustache. *' The poor old governor " 
(Harry's tone was not in the least disrespectful) — 
'* the poor old governor found out that a mediaeval 
castle was a good thing to look at ; but you see, I 
have found out that a sham mediaeval castle isn't 
at all a good thing to own. That is the progress 
of a generation. Can you see that white rock out 
in the current, Miss Dinsmore t " 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 12/ 

"That round one in a line with the tree ? Oh, 
yes!" 

" That is what they named the place for, Ash- 
ley Rock. You can't see much of it, but you 
know it must be a fair-sized rock to show so far 
out in the stream. Well, every time I come 
across that awful name — I feel about as cheerful 
as if I had the Rock tied around my neck." 

Alice looked at him reflectively, then her dim- 
ples began to show. 

** Oh, you lucky, ungrateful, happy, bored, un- 
conscious creature ! " with a peal of laughter. 
She always said what she liked to Harry. 

He sprang up: "Oh! if you have got any 
more adjectives to throw at me, I shall run 
away." 

Alice finished laughing at leisure. Harry leaned 
against the slim tree-trunk on her right. She had 
taken off her hat ; and he looked down at her 
brown head, and the long lashes distinct against 
her cheek. He reflected, among other things, 
that there was no better attitude for observing a 
girl's eyelashes. 

Her hair was brushed smoothly over her head, 
and gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck ; 



128 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

the little locks on her forehead were ruffled by the 
wind, and looked a shade lighter in color. 

A little broken sunlight found its way through 
the leaves, and flecked her hair and dress with 
gold. 

Presently she looked up, tilting her head back 
so that the broken lights and shadows fell upon 
her face. "I know you are abominably cross." 

"Actually savage," said Harry, looking down 
at her. " It is all very well to laugh at me ; but 
perhaps you don't know that I'm not allowed to 
sell the place for more than a couple of years yet. 
Of course, in the mean time, I can close it up and 
let it stand. I needn't see it again, unless I like." 

"Then, why don't you do that, if you dislike it 
so much } " 

Harry laughed. " I think it must be because 
I want a grievance." 

Alice remained looking up for a moment. Sud- 
denly, by some quick, inexplicable process of 
the mind, perhaps by the law of contrasts, her 
thoughts flashed back from the sunny grove and 
Harry's face, to Unity, the four square walls of 
Miss Fairfield's sitting-room, and Miss Fairfield 
herself, upright and angular at her sewing. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 29 

"I wish" — she said, and then stopped. 

"What is the rest of it ? " said Harry. 

Alice shook her head. "I am afraid you 
wouldn't understand." 

" Oh ! just try me," said Harry, sitting down to 
have a better view of her face. 

"■ It is rather disappointing," said Alice, laugh- 
ing again; ''but there is no secret. I was only 
thinking about my maiden aunt." 

Harry laughed too. " Are you sure that isn't 
an original way of getting rid of me t " 

" No. I never invented an original way of do- 
ing any thing. I don't care to be original : I 
would rather be exactly like other people." 

The wind came up from the river through the 
trees on the sloping bank. Their branches shifted 
with a motion like waves, and showed a thousand 
shades of varying green. 

A peculiar expression came over Harry's face. 
" I am afraid you will never be exactly like other 
people. Miss Dinsmore." 

" I am not going to stay here to be told that," 
said Alice. She did not rise, however. 

Harry was leaning on one elbow, and resting 
his light-brown head on his hand. '' Don't go," 



130 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

he said, looking up. "Stay and tell me about 
your aunt, I mean about Unity. I should like to 
see a place with that name." 

"Ah! there is nothing to see: that is the 
trouble," said Alice with a sigh. She did not feel 
in a particularly tragic mood, however. Unity 
seemed as* far off as Paris, and a much more 
impossible sort of place. 

A week or so after this, some one had the bril- 
liancy to propose a series of tableaux. 

Then Harry Ashley's mediaeval inheritance 
came into immediate use, as there was a room in 
the north tower which was declared to be the 
very room for dramatic purposes. In addition to 
its other advantages, there was a stained-glass 
window which was to be illumined for scenic 
effects. 

Under these circumstances several persons de- 
veloped new and unexpected traits. Some of the 
young ladies were found to resemble romantic and 
heroic personages. Miss d'Etreville was chiefly 
remarkable for the firmness with which she de- 
clined all characters likely to cause her to appear 
at all ridiculous or at a disadvantage. Mr. Wil- 
son was no longer a fatigued and middle-aged 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. I3I 

gentleman : he was a young fellow of twenty, 
with acrobatic capabilities, and more knowledge of 
costume than any one else among them. Mrs. 
Winters showed a fine, true eye for color and 
effect, and energy and perseverance in adapting 
drapery and costumes. 

They began to spend their mornings exclusively 
in the north tower, — Celia, Alice, Miss d'Etre- 
ville, Mrs. Winters, Mr. Wilson, and twenty 
others ; all talking, laughing, commanding, advis- 
ing, and arguing at once. 

The afternoon of the last rehearsal, there was 
a violent thunder-storm. Just as the rain ceased, 
Alice and Miss Burton were sent up-stairs to look 
for Harry, who in turn had been sent for a certain 
Persian rug which some one had seen in one of 
the upper rooms. 

Miss Burton was a small, plump brunette, who 
cherished a strong desire to pose as Queen Eliza- 
beth. 

On the stairs they met their young host, who 
was descending with the rug over his arm. 

"You don't know what a glorious rainbow 
there is," he told them. 

" Oh ! tell us where we can see it." 



132 AAT HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

"Wait a moment, and I'll take you up to my 
den if you don't mind the stairs." 

They waited ; and he came back without the 
rug, and took them to the den in question, which 
was quite at the top of the tower. 

It looked very much as if Harry had retreated 
there from the rest of his bewildering possessions. 
There were photographs of actresses and racers 
on the walls ; a tawny heap in the corner that 
rapped its tail forcibly when Harry ordered it to 
be quiet ; a big chair ; a desk heaped with a dis- 
orderly litter of papers, and two or three novels 
of the day. He glanced toward these last with 
an uneasy look and a quick blush. 

They went to the east window ; and there they 
saw the rain-swept, cloud-heaped sky, and a pure, 
vivid band of color across it. 

The room had several windows, and after a 
time Alice crossed to the west side to look at the 
river. The sun shone in and dazzled her : there 
was a little scarlet awning outside, but it was 
drawn up against the wall. 

Harry pulled at the rope, but it resisted firmly. 

"I've not had this down in some time, and it 
must have rusted," he said : '* I can loosen it in a 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 33 

moment ; " and, with the recklessness of his age, 
he sprang up and out on the stone ledge, which 
happily was a broad one. He tugged at the iron 
bar, which resisted, then gave way suddenly. He 
staggered back a step, half a step, steadied him- 
self by a desperate effort, and dropped in at the 
window rather flushed with the exertion and ex- 
citement. 

He looked directly at Alice. She did not say 
a word ; but the color was gone from her lips and 
cheeks, and her eyes were full of tears. 

Harry was profoundly touched and flattered ; 
but he had to intercept Miss Burton, who was 
crossing the room all in a flutter, and that occu- 
pied him for the next ten minutes. He felt a 
little awkward when he came back to Alice, but 
she made every thing easy. '* Never do that 
again," she said: "you have frightened away 
three of my five wits." The roses had come back 
to her cheeks. Harry said something foolish and 
commonplace : he was as shy as a girl, but there 
was more than his usual gentle deference in his 
manner. 

Harry's deference was a compliment to turn a 
woman's head. 



134 ^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

If he had been older and wiser, he might have 
known that the feeling she had shown was too 
open and undisguised to be of the sort supposed. 
The truth was, she had a great, friendly liking for 
him ; and her lips paled and her eyes filled at his 
danger, as quickly and honestly as if he had been 
her brother. But, pray, how was Harry to under- 
stand this or other subtleties of a young lady's 
heart } He was twenty-two, he saw a pretty girl 
with her eyes full of tears for him ; and this one 
touch of nature did more mischief than a hun- 
dred coquettish arts and graces which he had 
known and passed by. 

The tableaux passed off very creditably ; and, 
within a few days after, three of Celia's guests 
scattered in different directions. 

Mr. Wilson joined a party who were supposed 
to have been clamoring for his presence during 
the past fortnight. Miss d'Etreville went to visit 
friends who filled their country-house with guests 
until late autumn, and entertained in the Eng- 
lish manner. Mrs. Winters was called away by 
the approaching fall-term of her school. 

After their departure, Celia was taken suddenly 
ill, and did not recover her health for some time. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 35 

Through her illness Alice had rather a painful 
experience. 

She made acquaintance with the dark, accom- 
panying shadow of that new, strong love of life 
she had felt. She now felt also a chill and sick- 
ening horror of death and the grave, which was 
equally new and infinitely disagreeable. 

Celia, who was at no time in danger, would have 
been possibly amused, and certainly astonished, to 
find herself taken as the text for a sermon on mor- 
tality ; but Alice was entirely unaccustomed to 
sickness, and had a great, vague terror of it. The 
fear followed her everywhere in the house ; in all 
the rooms with their pleasant colors, great win- 
dows, and fresh flowers. She never felt wholly 
free from it except when she was in the open air, 
with the wind upon her face, and the tangible 
grassy earth beneath her feet. 

Perhaps it was a fanciful terror for one so young 
and strong, but it caused her some very real suf- 
fering. 

Harry Ashley came often to inquire for Mrs. 
Crosby ; and came from real and friendly motives, 
though he was certainly very willing to be re- 
ceived by Miss Dinsmore. Once or twice she 



136 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

came down to him in her white wrapper, with her 
hair hanging in a braid, and slight traces of fatigue 
under her eyes. 

In those days she grew to like him better than 
ever. He was so friendly, so hearty and genial ! 
After an hour of nervous depression, there was 
no sight in the world so welcome to her as his 
kind young face and blue eyes. Harry's eyes 
were of a clear, distinct color, like forget-me-nots 
and the eyes of young children ; and they had a 
sincere, faithful look, which may, or may not, 
have been a peculiarity of color. 

At last Celia began to recover. At this time 
Alice was a great source of delight to her, and 
she told her so with perfect frankness. 

"I am so grateful to you ! " she said one day. 

"Dear Celia, I have done nothing," said Alice, 
coming over and kneeling by her chair. 

" Do you mean that you have not staid up all 
night, and spoiled your complexion } I should not 
be at all grateful if you had done that. I like to 
look at you. You are a beautiful creature." 

" Dear me, Celia, what has become of your dis- 
cretion } " cried Alice. " You never used to pay 
me compliments." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 37 

"You must not expect discretion from a con- 
valescent," said the invalid. Alice went to get 
her some flowers. 

Ten minutes after, Harry Ashley found her in 
the kitchen-garden, standing by the vine-covered 
wall. The sun shone upon it, and each leaf that 
caught the light was a glittering mirror : those in 
shadow looked dark and cool. It met the sky 
squarely at the top ; and the pure green and the 
pure blue harmonized in some subtle way, beyond 
the power of words to express. And against this 
background stood Alice. The grass at her feet 
was full of little crimson stars. She held a sun- 
shade in her hand, — a silk toy of some dark, in- 
definite color, not purple, but which, as the sun 
shone through it, cast cool, violet shadows on her 
white dress. She played with it as she talked 
with Harry. 

Presently she said, " Do you know I am going 
away to-morrow t " 

Harry looked at her in astonishment, "Why, 
that is very sudden, I mean very soon," he stam- 
mered hastily. He was somewhat confused. 

" Neither, I think. I have been here almost 
two months." 



138 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" Can't Mrs. Crosby persuade you to stay ? " 
said Harry. 

Alice smiled, and shook her head. 

" Can't / persuade you to stay ? " said Harry. 

His eyes looked full into hers. She looked at 
him steadily : she felt that she had never liked 
him so well. 

Then she raised one hand with a silencing ges- 
ture, and shook her head. Harry took possession 
of the hand, and held it very lightly in his own. 

**A pleasant journey, then," he said at last, "to 
Unity — and everywhere else." 

He released her hand, raised his hat, and was 
gone. He went through the little wooden gate, 
and it closed with a click. 

Alice went toward the house. At first she felt 
a little lonely and depressed, but as she went her 
spirits began to rise. 

If any one had slighted her, here was one who 
honored her ; if any one had undervalued her, 
here was one who preferred her to all others. 
How kind he was, how good, how generous ! 

"And I am good too," she thought comfortably. 
" I have been frank and friendly and honest with 
him, and I checked him kindly and firmly now." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 39 

All of a sudden a thought struck her. She 
ran back to the gate : there was a little round 
hole in the wood, on a level with her eyes, and 
I am sorry to say Miss Dinsmorfe was so undigni- 
fied as to peep through it at the other side. 

Harry stood there with his hands in the side- 
pockets of his coat. He did not look sulky, nor 
particularly dejected, but only thoughtful. A big, 
tawny dog bounded down the lane, and jumped at 
him with the laudable ambition of knocking him 
over. 

" Down, Rex ! " said Harry in a pre-occupied 
tone : but Rex tried it again, and this time was so 
near having the best of it, that Harry was forced 
to shake him off vigorously, and then to tussle 
with him ; and finally the two disappeared up the 
lane in a genuine, undignified frolic. 

Alice shrugged her shoulders, and walked away. 
"It is evident I have done little harm," she said. 

She walked a few steps farther : " And it is 
evident my goodness was only skin-deep." 



140 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



IX. 

*• Love that hath us in the net, 
Can he pass, and we forget ? 
Many suns arise and set. 
Many a chance the years beget. 
Love the gift is Love the debt." 

Tennyson. 

It was early September when Alice went back 
to Unity. The air was already cool and search- 
ing, the sky high-arched and deep-blue ; and 
the outlines of all things wore that look of 
sharp distinctness which is the very earliest 
sign of fall. 

She came back resolved to cherish her new- 
found delight in life. If it were good to be alive 
and young, then enjoy youth and life to the 
utmost. To this end she clung, almost desper- 
ately, to simple pleasures of sight and sound and 
touch. In her enjoyment of them she became an 
innocent sensualist, a harmless materialist. She 
found delight in purple asters and golden-rod, and 
the first red leaves. A little later,- when the 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. I4I 

maples flamed after the cold nights, she gloried in 
their scarlet, and in the deep yellow of the chest- 
nuts, and the pale gold of the elms. 

She took long walks over the hills to the north, 
to come back tired and fall asleep in luxurious 
warmth before the wood-fire in the sitting-room. 
She gloated over that fire in the lengthening 
evenings. She knew that its glow and brightness 
would be all the more welcome as winter came 
on : it would be a refuge from the dreariness of 
the months of snow. 

Then came frosty nights ; and in the milder 
mornings after them, the frozen grass in the 
meadows smelt like new-mown hay. She leaned 
from her window to smell it, and shut her eyes to 
believe it was June. 

One mild, springlike day she took a book, and 
went out to a little knoll just beyond the orchard. 
It was scantily set with maples : most of them 
were red ; but one was pale yellow, and Alice sat 
down beneath it, and, instead of reading, looked 
up at the blue sky through its boughs. 

Then she leaned her head on her hand, and 
looked off over the meadows. They were already 
growing brown, and she hated the color ; but she 



142 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

loved to rest her eyes on their grand breadth 
and space. 

A man who was coming up the knoll from the 
road noted her figure and attitude against the 
sky. 

He was not in a hurry. He had come back 
with a resolve, but he had time to fulfil it : he 
had come back for joy, but he was not even impa- 
tient. He noted the outlines of her head and 
cheek and arm, her hair roughened by the wind, 
and the clear fairness of her skin against her 
dark-blue dress. 

Suddenly she turned her head and saw him. 
She sprang to her feet as she recognized him. 

She had thought herself firm in a conviction 
that she should never see him again ; but in the 
first instant of actual sight, she knew that her 
mind had been full of images of his coming back, 
— chief among them two contradictory visions, 
one of his coming in repentance and dependence 
on her forgiveness, the other of his taking forci- 
ble possession of her with no repentance nor ac- 
knowledgment at all. She was so confused by 
the surprise of these thoughts, and by the other, 
chief surprise of seeing him, that she did not 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 43 

know what she did. She thought she cried out, 
** Why have you come back ? why have you come 
back ? " over and over again ; when in reality she 
said nothing at all, and was going by him with 
set, averted face. 

It was Lawrence who stood in her way, and 
cried out, " No, no ! Don't pass me like that. 
Don't send me away without a word. Give me a 
moment, — give me a chance ! " 

She threw up her hands, and fell back against 
the tree. The rush of feeling seemed to be 
around her, as well as within her : it was like the 
noise and force of a great wind. 

She gave him a chance. It was more than a 
chance : it had been a certainty from the first 
moment of seeing him. 

" It is strange what imbecility a man is capable 
of when he flatters himself that he is behaving in 
a reaiBonable manner." Kenneth Lawrence said 
this about two hours later. He had been telling 
his story of two months past. Lawrence was a 
clever man, and not especially vain ; but there is 
no doubt that he enjoyed telling his own story. 

"I actually thought I was behaving reasonably 



144 ^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

when I ran away from here, — yes, I Hterally ran 
away, there is no denying that." 

" Do you mean to say that but for me you 
would have refused your uncle's legacy ? " said 
Alice. 

" Probably. You see, I had a theory that I was 
leading precisely the sort of life that suited me, 
that in fact I was fitted for no other, and — But 
there is no need of boring you with the rest of it. 
Usually a theory is one of the worst disorders a 
human being can have. My theory was no ex- 
ception to the rule." 

Alice took up a little branch of red leaves, and 
played with it. By and by she held it before her 
face. " And I spoiled your theory t " 

"Oh! spoiled," said Kenneth. "There is not 
a vestige left of it. You swept it away altogeth- 
er." 

"And if you had not met me, where would you 
be at this moment } " ^ 

"I should be somewhere in Boston, in my 
dingy-brown rooms probably, driving more or less 
heavily down a page of manuscript," said Ken- 
neth. He was beginning to wonder why she kept 
on asking questions in that odd, steady monotone. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 45 

" Then I think you had better go back to Bos- 
ton — in the six-o'clock train." 

''Alice!" 

''I said — you had better — go back." 

Lawrence leaned forward, — he was not very far 
away, — and took the branch forcibly out of her 
hands. Behind it her face was gray, and set in 
hard, fixed lines. 

" My dear girl ! why do you look like that } 
What is the matter .^ Tell me what I have 
done." 

Alice turned her face aside : " I am sorry you 
came back : that is what you have done. Release 
my hand, Mr. Lawrence. And I suppose you 
think I cannot give you up " — 

*' I cannot give yoii up, Alice," cried Law- 
rence. ''Are you mad.? are you out of your 
senses altogether, that you treat me like this 
without a reason V 

Aflce went on calmly, " But I can give you up. 
I have not been unhappy these two months." 

*'Ah! but I have," said Lawrence. ''I have 
been wretched : are you going to send me back to 
that } " 

Alice turned and looked at him. His face was 



146 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

quite close to hers. '' I do not want to be made 
miserable," she said piteously. ''Can't you un- 
derstand me ? I have changed your whole life, 
and some time you will reproach me " — 

" Do you take me for a brute ? " broke in Law- 
rence indignantly. 

Alice did not argue this point : indeed, she 
seldom argued any thing. Her large, gray eyes 
(brown-gray they were on this near view) looked 
straight into Lawrence's : " And I could not bear 
that you should reproach me, but I can bear to let 
you go." 

''Too late, Alice, — too late." 

Alice shook her head ; but her eyes fell under 
his, the lids quivered and finally closed, their long 
lashes were wet. 

Lawrence saw his advantage : he drew her 
gently towards him. 

There was really no further question of the six- 
o'clock express. 

"What nonsense it was!" he said by and by : 
"just as if you were not worth all the theories in 
the world ! " 

" Don't be too sure of that," said Alice saucily. 
"You had better not indulge any very exalted 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 47 

ideas of my worth. I have no intention of setting 
up any such opinions of you." 

" Good ! " said Lawrence. " I dare say you 
wouldn't tell what you do think of me } " 

" I think you could be terribly ill-tempered, for 
one thing. There is a line between your eye- 
brows," looking at him with a scrutinizing ex- 
pression. " I never noticed it before. That is 
ill-temper." 

" Is it a straight line } " asked Lawrence anx- 
iously. 

"Yes — no, it is turned a little to the right." 

"Ah! then it is habit, not ill-temper. Habit 
makes crooked, whimsical lines ; time, and care, 
and one's disposition, straight ones." 

" Oh ! I can't go on counting your faults, if you 
are going to have a theory for each one of them'' 

" I am glad there is something to keep you 
from counting them," said Lawrence. "They 
are not to be looked at all- at once. Distrib- 
ute them like shadows on a landscape, and you 
will see what an extremely good fellow I really 
am." 

"What conceit ! " said Alice. " Such airy, con- 
fident, self-enjoying conceit ! Where did you keep 



148 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

it last summer? I never discovered it." Upon 
the whole, he was allowed wonderfully little senti- 
ment that afternoon. Once or twice he had the 
misfortune to be actually laughed at. "I dare 
say you are fond of me, but why do you wish me 
to believe it is on the heroic scale } Every 
woman believes by nature that there is a love 
greater than time, as great as death. But show 
me the woman who keeps her belief! and it needs 
no experience at all to spoil it, only a tolerably 
clear pair of eyes." 

" What a sceptic you are ! " said Lawrence. 
** Can't you be a little romantic on principle .•* 
You like to do what is usual, and I thought young 
ladies were usually romantic." 

"Then, I am romantic enough to be like other 
girls," said Alice, " but only for consistency. I 
have kept my common-sense. You might think 
very well of me now " — 

" Oh ! very well indeed," said Lawrence. 

" How you interrupt ! And in ten years, let us 
say, you might think me a very poor substitute 
for any of your theories." 

Lawrence leaned over and whispered some- 
thing. On the whole, we will not inquire what 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 49 

he said just then. It was not any thing at all 
reasonable : he had disposed of his common-sense 
very successfully indeed. 

Alice looked at him with a light in her eyes. 
"Are you sure .^ " she said wistfully. "Are you 
quite sure } " 

Her face shone with that look of unaccustomed 
passion that on a girl's face is so nearly divine. 

She came back to practical matters in a mo- 
ment, however. " Suppose we go into the house 
now. Aunt Eunice will put the blue-and-white 
china on the table at just the usual hour, no mat- 
ter what we are talking about up here." 

There was a deep, clear color in her cheeks, 
not exactly like carnations or roses : nothing in 
this world is exactly like the fresh bloom of a 
girl's cheek. 

" I dare say you will come in to tea, Mr. Law- 
rence," she said, as they walked back across the 
orchard. 

"Won't 1 1 " said Kenneth ; "but how long am 
I to be ' Mr. Lawrence ' } I don't wish to be 
exacting, but that is the third time this after- 
noon." 

Alice looked up. She was leaning Hghtly on 



150 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 

his arm. "I wish you did not mind," she said 
hesitatingly. " I would so much rather call you 
so. You see, I have called other people by their 
Christian names, some of papa's friends " — 

A quick expression went over Lawrence's face, 
a contraction so strong, so sudden, that it looked 
like pain, Alice looking up saw it, and stopped 
short in her sentence. " That is enough," she 
said in a choking voice: '* I understand you — 
fully." Before Lawrence understood what she 
meant to do, she slipped her hand out of his arm 
and ran away across the orchard. 

He found her crouched down against the 
meadow wall. It was cold and damp there now : 
the mild, golden afternoon was turning chill. 
At first she was not to be pacified. 

" There is no use in telling me I am mistaken. 
I am not mistaken. I understand you very well. 
I believe you despise me at heart. Why did you 
not stay away } If I were a man, I would be 
ashamed to come back to what I despised. Oh ! 
if it is not I that you despise, it is my father and 
his friends, and the life I led before I came here. 
You do not like to be reminded of these things : 
you wish I would not mention them. Why did 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 5 I 

you come back to me ? I never tried to deceive 
you. I told you how I spent my life until I was 
sixteen, — I told you in the meadows. Yes, and 
I understood you even then. You wished I had 
spent my life here in Unity. Ah ! but I have not. 
When I was a child, when other girls have their 
mammas and their schools, I was with my father : 
we went from city to city. I was never at school : 
we were never long in one place. Sometimes we 
were rich, sometimes we were poor. And he had 
friends everywhere. Some of them were credit- 
able people ; and some you would not brush 
against on the street, — foreigners, with demon- 
strative manners, and titles and jewelry that no 
one believed in, not even I." 

Kenneth felt a faint, sickening disgust creeping 
over him. It was almost a physical sensation, 
but this time he controlled the muscles of his 
face. 

" And afterwards some very good, respectable, 
charitable people took me in. They were rela- 
tives of mine; and I hated them, — hated them 
always ; and I would have gone back to papa — 
oh ! I would have gone back so gladly, at any time 
in these dull, dreadful, lonely, miserable years ! " 



152 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" Dear, you shall have no more miserable years 
if I can help it," said Kenneth gently. ** Now 
stand up : the grass is damp." 

Alice allowed him to lift her to her feet ; but at 
first she kept him at arm's-length, and she did 
not answer at once. Then she said, " I am afraid 
this is all a mistake. We are sure to make each 
other miserable at last. You have changed all 
your plans of life for me, and some day you will 
regret it." 

Lawrence managed to reduce the distance be- 
tween them. ''Ah! that old story again," said 
he. " And all this for a look ! Is it so very 
strange I do not like to hear that you have called 
other men by their Christian names } " (Pause.) 
" You have a very bad opinion of me, Alice "i " 

No answer : Alice was very quiet. 

"You think I am jealous.-^" 

" Decidedly," in a smothered tone against his 
coat-sleeve. 

'' Ill-tempered } " 

"Rather." 

"Cruel.?" 

"Possibly." 

" Fickle .? " 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 53 

"As Others are." 

" Careless, selfish ? " 

"Like the rest of the world." 

"Now, don't you think I have been sufficiently 
humbled } I feel as if I had been mentally kicked 
down-stairs. You have no idea how humiliated 
I am. I begin to wonder how you can endure me 
at all." 

She slipped away from him with her face pink 
to the roots of her hair. " Suppose we go in to 
tea," she sai^, glad to return to aunt Eunice and 
the blue-and-white china. " You have kept me 
quite long enough. Dear me ! what is there to 
laugh at .^ " 

"I beg your pardon," said Lawrence : "nothing 
to laugh at, but that is a peculiarly feminine way 
of putting it." 



154 ^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



X. 



" Return unto thy father's house, 
And revel it as bravely as the best." 

Taming of the Shrew. 

One October afternoon Alice opened the door 
of the sitting-room, and walked in upon her aunt. 
Miss Eunice looked up from her sewing with an 
inquiring expression. 

*' I have been to the village," said Alice briefly. 
She dropped her hat and shawl upon the table as 
usual, and sat down in the chintz-covered rocking- 
chair. Miss Fairfield's keen, faded eyes watched 
her as she swayed backwards and forwards. Pres- 
ently she said, " Aunt Eunice } " 

'*Yes, Alice." 

" I have a letter from my father." 

" Dear me ! " said Miss Fairfield involuntarily. 
" I mean, what does he say, my dear.? and I hope 
he is quite well." 

Alice laughed, a genuine laugh full of amuse- 
ment. " I don't believe you hope any thing of 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 55 

the sort, aunty," she said good-humoredly. **And 
I can't see why you feel called upon to say so." 

Miss Eunice had some very good personal rea- 
sons for disliking her brother-in-law, and when- 
ever she thought of him certain terrible ideas 
always presented themselves to her mind. For- 
eign habits and customs, a life of vicious in- 
dulgence, the Church of Rome, — Miss Eunice 
mixed them all together whenever she thought of 
Cornelius Dinsmore : yet she felt obliged to say, 
'' I am sure I wish your father well, Alice." 

" Do you, aunty } I wonder if it is necessary 
to wish your enemy either good or ill. I suppose 
it is necessary for you, though. You can see 
black and white, but no gray." 

" I don't know what you mean by that, Alice," 
said Miss Eunice. ** Gray is my favorite color." 

Alice laughed. " Will you read papa's letter, 
aunty } " pushing it across the table. . 

Miss Eunice read, — 

My dear Alice [it was one of Dinsmore's pecu- 
liarities never to allude to the insignificant fact of any 
relationship between himself and AHce, either in the ad- 
dress or signature of his letters], — I dare say you have 
thought all manner of things of my long silence; but, as 



156 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

you know, I have been down in luck, had nothing pleasant 
to tell, and naturally did not feel like saying civil things to 
any one. When a man is in that sort of mood, he had best 
leave letter-writing alone. Now, however, the tide appears 
to have turned. There is no use in explaining, but the 
upshot of the whole matter is, I have had a run of luck; 
and, if you like to come to New York for the winter or 
longer, I will endeavor to give you a pleasant season of 
it. Let me know your decision as soon as possible, as 
some of my arrangements depend upon it : however, if you 
decide to come, you may name as early a date as you like. 
Of course, if you like to remain in Unity, I have nothing to 
say against it : indeed, I leave the matter entirely in your 
own hands, though very naturally I hope you will come here, 
and join 

Yours affectionately, 

C. DiNSMORE. 

" Do you mean to go } " asked Miss Eunice, 
looking up from the letter. 

" I don't know," said Alice listlessly. She 
leaned forward upon the table, and bowed her 
face upon her hands. 

Miss Eunice laid her sewing aside, and came 
around from her seat at the table in a succession 
of quick, angular movements. 

"Alice, you sha'n't go unless you want to," she 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 5/ 

said earnestly. " Unless you want to, you shan't 
go at all." 

Alice looked up. She was not crying, as her 
aunt had supposed. ** I think I want to go," she 
said slowly; **but I am not quite sure." 

"If your mother" — began Miss Eunice; but 
Alice stopped her. " Don't talk about my mother, 
aunt Eunice, please. If I am to go back to my 
father, I would rather not think of her at all." 

Miss Fairfield made another venture. " If you 
think Mr. Lawrence would object " — 

Alice started to her feet. '* Mr. Lawrence has 
no right to object at present, aunt Eunice," she 
said quickly. 

She took up her hat and shawl, and went out 
of the room. A hot, deep color suffused her fair 
skin ; not the blush of consciousness, but rather 
a flash of indignation at the first — the very first 
— shadow of a future authority. It was not easy 
to imagine Alice among those who serve for love. 
It was her role to be served, and she did it very 
gracefully and well. 

As she closed the sitting-room door, she was 
surprised to find that her eyes dwelt pleasantly 
on the wide hall and the narrow stairs ; and, as 



158 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

she went up to her room, it was still more sur- 
prising to note how familiarly, almost affection- 
ately, her hand clung to the rail. 

Would she be sorry to go, she wondered, — 
sorry to leave this dull, safe, peaceful, respect- 
able shelter ? As she opened her door, the chill 
draught met her, and she shivered in it. 

This was a cold day, and the warmth of the 
fires below had not penetrated here. " Ugh ! " 
she said, with a shudder, and an abrupt change 
of thought. " If I go to New York this winter, 
I suppose I shall not freeze, at least." 

She wrapped the soft heavy shawl she carried 
closely around her, and threw herself on the little 
white bed. " Ah ! this is better. Now I can 
think comfortably." 

Alice had much to think of. In the first place, 
she had to deal with a very keen regret that this 
opportunity came so late, when the desire that 
had long been a part, and so large a part, of her 
very nature, was gone out of her life. She dread- 
ed to miss an accustomed desire, to lose her hold 
on any familiar habit of thought. 

She was only twenty ; yet already she looked 
fearfully in her mind for an unwelcome maturity, 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 59 

and fearfully in her mirror for lines across the 
smooth forehead. She had a woman's natural 
terror of losing youth, exaggerated by the bitter 
thought that thus far the years of her girlhood 
had been waste seasons. 

Then she remembered why she no longer de- 
sired this thing. What a flood it was that had 
swept through her ! Small wonder that old land- 
marks were carried away. 

She sighed half impatiently, and tried to turn 
her thoughts to other things. 

She had not a woman's common faith in love. 
Her scepticism was not a natural conviction, but 
a lesson taught very thoroughly by her observa- 
tions. 

And she did not set her own love higher than 
that of others. She yielded to its compelling 
force ; but she did not believe that it was a 
thing divine, that it would glorify life to the 
end, even that it would continue to smooth and 
brighten the hardships of life, or last beyond 
the common measure of the love of man. 

She stood apart, and looked on her own pas- 
sion as one who looks on youth and beauty and 
vigor, saying, "All is vanity. They fade, and en- 



l60 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

dure not. They go down into dust and corruption 
and darkness." 

But, after she had regretted that she no longer 
wished to go, she made a surprising discovery. 
She discovered that the old desire was not quite 
gone out of her life, that the opportunity was not 
altogether *oo late for her wishes. After all, the 
old traits were still to be found in her, though 
overlaid by much that was new. 

She would still like to go back to her father 
for a little, a parting glimpse of Bohemia, a few 
more triumphs of forbidden violets, and admira- 
tion and flattery. 

There were certainly advantages to be gained 
by remaining in Unity. If she remained, Ken- 
neth could come to her, she would see him often. 
If she went, there was the prospect of a long, 
unbroken absence ; but she thought, " I dare say 
he will do very well without me until spring," and 
this stirred a quick flash of pride. " And, in that 
case, I can do very well without him." 

By and by she told herself that it was right 
and dutiful for her to go to her father, and then 
she revolted from the sham in disgust. " No, I 
will not make a hypocrite of myself. I am not 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. l6l 

troubling at all about my father. My father's 
daughter is the person to be pleased." 

Then she thought, though she was angry with 
herself for thinking it, that her going might vex 
Kenneth. She felt a great terror whenever she 
thought that he might some time be angry with 
her. It would brush the bloom from their happi- 
ness forever. 

As Alice lay wrapped in the warm shawl in 
the cold room, she looked up through one small 
window-pane at a little square of October sky, 
and the topmost branch of a tree, yellow and 
fading against it. Sky through glass was a sad 
sight to her, for winter in Unity was little less 
than a horror. As she looked, and thought 
of all these troublesome things, the sky and 
withering branch began to be blotted before 
her eyes ; and she was surprised to find that 
tears were quietly and steadily flowing down 
her face. 

" Pshaw ! how absurd ! " she said, brushing them 
away impatiently. " I can do exactly as I like 
about it, and whichever I decide for ought to 
please me well enough ; " but this did not check 
the unreasonable tears. After a time she grew 



1 62 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

tired, and fell asleep, with wet lashes resting on 
her cheeks. 

When she woke, it was dusk outside, and Miss 
Eunice was standing over her with a puzzled 
expression, and a lamp in her hand. 

"Nothing is the matter, aunt Eunice," she said, 
raising herself on one elbow, " except that I have 
decided to go to New York." 

Four days after this, the Eastern express was 
coming into New York, forty minutes late. The 
express had waited at New Haven for another 
train, and had been further delayed on nearing 
the city by the crossing trains outward-bound at 
that hour. 

In one of the forward cars was Alice, looking 
out impatiently into the gathering grayness of 
the afternoon. Her doubts had resolved them- 
selves into a very fever of restlessness. How 
impatient she was, with her face almost against 
the car-window ! To arrive, to arrive ! How 
slow they were ! How time dragged ! They 
were getting on, however. 

At last the familiar tawdry suburbs, at last 
the advertisements of the metropolis, at last the 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 63 

tunnel : the train slows, more gently, a slight 
jar, it stops. 

People who had parcels and children gathered 
them up, and departed. Alice came down the 
steps of the car with rather an anxious expression 
in her wide-open, gray eyes. A trembling de- 
spondency seized her as her foot touched the plat- 
form ; but then, she was always despondent in a 
railway-station. 

She never could tell whether this was caused 
by distaste for the general air of petty excitement 
and bustle, the hand-shaking and demonstrative- 
ness of the class that is habitually demonstrative 
in public, or by some peculiar and perfectly un- 
accountable constitution of her mind. It was 
depression, at all events. 

Meantime she was looking about for her father ; 
and there, not a yard away, stood a gentleman 
with a full, long, auburn mustache, and a pair of 
quick light-hazel eyes. The eyes glanced over 
her face without pausing ; but she knew their 
owner, and went forward. ^* How do you do, 
papa } " she said, extending her hand. 

This was Cornelius Dinsmore. 

Cornelius was somewliat flurried. " Why, 



1 64 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Alice ! How are you, my dear ? Glad to see 
you safely arrived. Take my arm going through 
this crowd. Have you had a tedious day of it .? " 

"Rather tedious," said Alice, leaning on his 
arm. " We are late in, are we not t " 

" Half an hour or more. My eyes are getting 
old, you see. I began to think I had missed of 
you. What have you done about your baggage 1'' 

" Nothing," said Alice. " I couldn't express 
my trunk, because " — 

" Because I gave you no address. To be sure. 
Now give me your check, and wait here a few 
moments." 

Alice smiled as she watched him briskly mak- 
ing his way through the crowd. Dinsmore was 
of rather a burly figure, and was not, as we know, 
an American ; nevertheless he slipped through 
small spaces with the utmost dexterity. 

Very soon he was back again. " That is all 
right. Now we will go. By Jove, how you've 
grown, Alice ! " as his girl stood up beside him. 
Her head was very nearly on a level with his own. 

" I imagine your ideas of me had grown small- 
er, papa," said Alice. 

As they carne into the street, the air struck 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 65 

warm and damp upon their faces. It had been 
raining, and every thing was splashed with mud. 
Crowds were hurhng themselves in and out of 
the doors of the Grand Central. " Carriage, sir } " 
sounded right and left. 

" What a nuisance these fellows are ! " said 
Cornelius impatiently. " I have a little coicpe 
engaged down here. What are you stopping for, 
Alice } " 

"Dear old muddy, disreputable city!" said 
Alice, looking around her affectionately. " How 
nice it looks, papa ! " 

" Glad you think so, my dear. I should say it 
looked rather dirty. We are having fine weather 
though : October is the month for fine weather in 
this climate. I dare say it is cold enough in 
Unity by this time." 

Alice looked at her father very keenly as they 
were driven through the streets. 

Sometimes she had an uncomfortable suspicion 
that Cornelius was destined to deteriorate as he 
grew older. It was not realized as yet, at all 
events. He was unchanged in looks and manner, 
and as well-appointed as ever. 

Dinsmore was certainly not unprepossessing to 



1 66 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

look at. His bright, rather under-sized eyes were 
agreeably expressive ; the full, heavy sweep of his 
mustache concealed any significant lines of mouth 
and chin ; and his complexion was exceedingly 
fresh and healthy for his years. /An excellent 
digestion had done more tovvard preserving his 
physique than the most temperate life and the 
clearest conscience would have accomplished 
without it. 

" So you are glad to come back to New York, 
Alice .^ " He was quite unconscious of her scru- 
tiny, or, at all events, of its keenness. ** Ah ! you 
are right enough. Do you know, I have become 
quite a New-Yorker myself, opinions and all. I'll 
growl about the streets and the weather, and any 
thing else you like ; but let me catch an outsider 
at the same thing, I'm an old inhabitant immedi- 
ately. I think I have been here about two years." 

He continued to talk in this manner: he was 
evidently in high good-temper. Alice was aware 
that they were going up town, she did not quite 
know how far. At last they stopped. She fol- 
lowed him from the carriage across the sidewalk, 
up a few steps, through a large door, up several 
flights of stairs, across a very narrow hall, into a 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 6/ 

room that seemed to dazzle her with a confusion 
of white-and-gold. 

"These are our rooms, Alice," said Cornelius. 

Alice looked about her, and things gradually- 
cleared before her bewildered eyes. The whole 
interior was brightly lighted, and she had been 
dazzled on coming in from the outer dusk. 

She saw a room of moderate size, but enlarged 
by several mirrors. It had four windows, and was 
draped and furnished everywhere in white and 
gold. The inner room opening from this was 
smaller and more dimly lighted, and was all in 
deep, pure tones of crimson. In the middle of 
this room was a round white table set cosily for 
two. 

** O papa, how charming ! " cried Alice. She 
began to feel the color, the bold, glittering white 
and gold against the dusky red. 

" Pretty, isn't it } " said Dinsmore with par- 
donable complacency. *' Let Lena take your hat 
and cloak." 

Alice turned, and saw a little square-built figure, 
a round German face, with light-blue eyes, and 
tight flaxen braids wound around the head. 

" Alice, this is Lena. — Lena, this is your young 



1 68 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

lady ; and now she will command both of us," said 
Dinsmore pleasantly, while the little maid bobbed 
some strange little foreign courtesy. She seemed 
a grotesque toy in the pretty room. Nothing 
could excel Dinsmore's manner to an inferior : it 
was the perfection of affability, but neither con- 
descending nor familiar. 

Indeed, he had some tricks of manner which 
were little less than marvellous. He could wear 
the graciousness of long-accustomed hospitality 
in lodgings let by the week, or, for that matter, 
by the day ; and he could lend fine suggestions of 
ancestral dignity to newly furnished apartments. 
He gave orders as though he had been excep- 
tionally well served all the days of his life : in his 
air was something of the benignant authority of 
the old squire, something of the gay good-humor 
of the heir coming of age. And withal, the man 
did not pose consciously or absurdly : it was his 
dramatic Hibernian temperament that constantly 
asserted itself. 

*'Now come and see your own room," said Cor- 
nelius eagerly. He was as delighted at her sur- 
prise and pleasure as a schoolboy. Alice remem- 
bered this mood of old : it was the most lovable 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 69 

phase of his character. Her room opened from 
the white - and - gold parlor. As she stepped 
through the door, a rich, penetrating fragrance 
met her. "■ Oh ! how sweet ! " she cried. " It 
smells like a garden. There's some magic here. 
I'm afraid to go in." 

Cornelius was lighting the gas ; as it streamed 
up, she saw opposite her a little dressing-table 
with a great handful of heliotrope and some pur- 
ple pansies lying on it, and reflected in the mir- 
ror above. 

There was a heavily curtained window, a low, 
sloping chair, a slender white couch draped to the 
floor, and on it a woman's dress. 

" Oh, what a lovely thing ! " said Alice, running 
over to look at it. 

It was of ivory-white cashmere, with many 
little frills and ruchings about the trained skirt ; 
and, wherever their folds were ruffled, there was 
a gleam of pale-gold satin. And around the 
throat, and falling down the front, were delicate 
masses of creamy lace, with here and there a 
shining loop of pale gold. 

"Princesse," said Alice, going down on her 
knees to examine it. 



I/O AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

"I don't know what you call it," said Cornelius, 
with a boyish laugh. " I knew what I wanted, 
though. I told them how to make it, — told 
them myself, Alice." 

Alice sprang up, and took him by the shoulders. 
** Go away," she said promptly. ** I want to put 
it on." 

She pushed him gently toward the door ; and he 
went laughing, and pleased with her and himself. 

After a short time she came out to him all in 
cream-white, with a knot of heliotrope and pansies 
in the dainty, yellowish lace at her throat. Her 
hair was freshly brushed and coiled, and there 
were sprays of heliotrope behind her ear. Cor- 
nelius never looked at her dress. 

He came forward, and took her by both hands, 
and drew her under the gaslight. 

*' Let me look at you, little girl. How you 
have changed ! Do you know that I scarcely 
knew you at first } It was three years since I 
had seen you, — three years." The muscles of 
his face twitched slightly. Alice remembered the 
look. Her own face hardened somewhat. 

"Yes, papa, I am very well aware that it is 
three years." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. I/I 

To part with Alice had been an act of economy 
and convenience on the part of Dinsmore ; and, 
to tell the truth, he had submitted to it with very 
good grace : yet, at that moment, there are few 
sympathetic persons who would not have pitied 
his three-years' separation from his child. Alice 
was not inclined to make herself disagreeable. 
She had no present cause ; and there were the 
pretty rooms, and the warmth and light, and her 
charming dress and fragrant flowers, and the 
pleasant winter before her. 

" Oh ! well, papa, now you can make my ac- 
quaintance. You have no idea what a charming 
girl I am. Shall I sing ^Jeanie Morrison' to 
you } " 

This was a favorite song of Dinsmore's. He 
had a pretty taste in ballads. 

" Come and open the piano for me," said 
Alice. 

" Ah ! you've grown a fine lady," said her 
father. " Don't I remember when you would 
open a piano, and climb on it afterwards } " 

'' Not an upright piano," said Alice, laughing. 
''Don't make the story worse than is true." 

She sat down, and began to sing. Her voice 



1/2 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

was a sweet, untrained contralto of very moderate 
compass and richness. 

Dinsmore listened from an arm-chair. He felt 
happy and virtuous, and very comfortable. 

" ' I've wandered east, I've wandered west, 
Through mony a weary way ; 
But never, never can forget 
The luve o' life's young day ! " 

The tender Scotch words, and his girl's voice, 
stole in upon all that was soft and impressible in 
his nature. How he watched Alice as she sang ! 
There was a mist before his eyes as he looked. 

And he had not yet dined. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 173 



XI. 

" Like one that on a lonesome road 

Doth walk in fear and dread." 

Coleridge. 

** A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature." 

Emerson. 

Next morning Alice walked out of her dining- 
room on the opposite side from the parlor, and 
walked into a room that was Dinsmore's especial 
property. Dinsmore was walking about, bringing 
a pencil-point to a state of perfection, and scat- 
tering black-lead dust impartially over the floor. 

"You wouldn't let me do this in the other 
rooms, Alice," he said pleasantly. 

** No, indeed, untidy man," said Alice, gather- 
ing her skirts into one hand, and looking about 
her. She saw that the room was tolerably large, 
and had little in it, except a number of comfort- 
able lounging-chairs, an equal number of light 
movable ones, and a couple of small round tables, 
covered iust then with the morning papers. 



174 A^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" This is where I shall take my old-fogy 
friends," said Cornelius amiably. ''I am grow- 
ing an old fogy myself ; and I like my old com- 
rades, and my arm-chair, and my ow^n quarters, 
that fine young ladies like you w^on't interfere 
with." 

*' Is that a hint for me to take myself off ? " 
said Alice. " I shall not do any thing of the 
kind ; at least, not until I've seen what your 
quarters are like." 

She went across into the bedroom, and came 
out with an indignant expression on her face. 

"Why, papa, it is a closet,'' she said reproach- 
fully. "What do you mean by folding yourself 
up in a cupboard t " 

"Just don't trouble yourself about my cup- 
board," said her father. ' " It suits me very 
well." 

She found interference of no avail. Cornelius 
was not disposed to alter any of his housekeep- 
ing arrangements. 

That evening he received some of his old 
friends. 

Miss Dinsmore appeared in her white dress, 
and chatted pleasantly with them in the white- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1/5 

and-gold room before Cornelius took them to his 
particular haunt. 

They were not very remarkable persons. It 
seemed to Alice that they wore better coats than 
she remembered'; but, on the other hand, the 
brilliancy which had invested all her thoughts of 
"papa's friends" was decidedly lacking in these 
actual examples. One of them, a dark, melan- 
choly little man, was called *' Count " once or 
twice ; but he carefully explained to Alice that 
this was not his title, but that the others ''mocked 
themselves at his republican principles." 

Alice was a little amused by this ; but, when 
Cornelius had carried his visitors away to whist, 
she sat down, and wondered gloomily if she would 
ever be actually bored in the midst of her white- 
and-gold. It was a frame of mind so intimately 
associated with Unity meadows. 

After this it became a matter of course for 
her to entertain some of Dinsmore's friends for 
a short time early in the evening. 

Sometimes it amused her to do so, and some- 
times it did not ; and, every time that she was 
not amused, she felt a fresh surprise and dis- 
appointment. 



176 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

One evening she had a pleasant surprise. She 
had left the parlor for a moment ; and, when she 
came back through the dining-room, her father 
was talking with some one who had just arrived, 
— a young man considerably taller than Dins- 
more. Both gentlemen turned as her dress rus- 
tled in the doorway, and the new-comer was 
Harry Ashley. 

'* I was awfully astonished," Harry admitted 
ingenuously. " I don't know why ; but I never 
had connected your name and Col. Dinsmore's. 
I am not good at finding out how people are 
related." 

"Who is, except old ladies.^" laughed Alice. 
*'We are even on that point, for I never knew 
you were one of papa's friends." Harry's remark 
recurred to her afterwards ; but, at the time, she 
thought little of it. 

She was so thoroughly and genuinely glad to 
see her friend, that she had few thoughts for any 
thing else. " It is the queerest thing in the 
world," she said to herself; "but I believe I was 
actually feeling a little homesick, and the sight 
of that delightful boy has set me all right again. 
I don't know why it should, I'm sure." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. lyy 

The truth was, she had begun to have a slight 
feeling of discontent ; and she was not long in 
deciding upon some substantial reasons for it. 
In the first place, Kenneth Lawrence was what 
some very modern English novelists call " diffi- 
cult." 

On the morning she left Unity, she wrote to 
him, stating her plans. She had made a conven- 
ient little rule for such doubtful cases, — ** Act 
first, and ask permission afterwards ; " but then, 
this was said in the old days, when no man had 
greater power over her than her father's very 
light, nominal control. Now she waited Kenneth's 
answer with a nervousness which it annoyed her 
to acknowledge. 

He wrote her a charming letter, tender, deli- 
cately considerate in every line ; but Alice had a 
perfectly unreasonable conviction that it was the 
letter of a very angry man, or, at least, of a man 
who had been so angry, that, even when his heat 
was over, he found it necessary to choose his 
expressions with perceptible caution. And then 
he asked, what was most natural and proper, per- 
mission to address her father formally as to their 
engagement. 



178 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Alice wrote : " I do not know why I feel such 
reluctance to let you speak to papa. Or, rather, 
I do know ; and I suppose it is best to tell you. 
The truth is, papa will be terribly jealous ; and, 
when he is jealous, he is simply unbearable. 
That sounds very selfish, and I can't pretend 
to be disinterested ; yet, after all, I do not want 
to spoil his happiness — poor papa — when we 
have been apart so long. Give me credit for this 
much, at least. And I think I deserve a little 
credit for my honesty, because I have not tried 
to blind you with any pretty nonsense. I have 
told you the exact literal truth, which does not 
sound nearly as well. And you will let matters 
rest for the present, won't you t I would so much 
rather ! That is my best reason, after all." 

The end of it all was, that Kenneth let her 
have her way ; but the forced gentleness became 
more apparent. 

" Dear me ! " said Alice, " I wish his letters did 
not make me feel that he has just had a struggle 
with himself and the Devil. He has the best of 
it at present, certainly ; but some day he will not 
have the best of it, and then what will become 
of me.?" 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 79 

She had other trials ; and, among them, the 
fact that Celia Cros.by was not in New York that 
winter. She was spending her time pleasantly in 
Washington and Richmond, but Alice found her 
absence highly inconvenient. She missed Celia 
sincerely. To do her justice, she would have 
missed her friend even from the midst of pleas- 
ures ; but it was not in human nature to forget 
that Celia's presence would have given her cer- 
tain social advantages and amusements that she 
missed sorely. 

She had never cared for the society of other 
wom^n, but she now began to feel the necessity 
of their acquaintance and support. She looked 
with keen envy at the groups of young girls she 
met in the streets. No dances and receptions 
for her, no pleasant formalities of calling, no dis- 
cussion of fashions, no gay, gossiping small-talk. 
'' I never have cared about other girls," she said 
to her father; "but really, one cannot get on 
without them." 

"I wish you would be careful not to use such 
very singular expressions, Alice," said Dinsmore 
severely. " Of course you care for the society of 
your own sex ; or, if you don't, it is not particu- 



l80 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

larly creditable to say so. Women should have 
conventional opinions, or none." 

He was falling into a habit of snubbing her 
opinions, and Alice found it trying. His mas- 
culine roughness was hard upon her, after the 
unvalued peace of Miss Eunice's neutrality. 

She began to suspect that she was having 
rather a dull winter, after all. It was hard to be 
so much alone. To be sure, she was accustomed 
to it ; but then, she was so tired of it as well, and 
she had thought it was over at last. She thought 
it was harder to bear than if she had not known 
it so well. ^ 

Dinsmore was seldom at home during the day. 
His friends and his cards occupied many of the 
evenings, and very frequently he did not appear 
at the breakfast-table. 

Alice had her pretty rooms and her pretty 
dresses, her walks on Broadway and the avenues, 
and sometimes a play or an opera, invariably in 
her father's company ; and that was all. 

Unless we regard Harry Ashley in the light of 
an amusement : she was always so glad to see 
him. Harry would have liked dearly to act as 
her escort, according to American customs; but, 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. l8l 

at this suggestion, Alice had an unaccountable fit 
of shyness. 

"Papa has English notions about chaperones, 
and such things," she told him ; "yet, after all, I 
dare say he would let me go with you. And I 
would like it myself — only — somehow I don't 
like — There I did you ever hear any thing so 
mixed up and ridiculous and rude 1 " 

" All right," said Harry cheerfully. " I don't 
want to bother you, and I have an idea that I 
understand." 

" If you do, it is nothing less than a miracle," 
said Alice. " I never heard such a mixed state- 
ment in my life. But you see it would be differ- 
ent if I had a chaperone anywhere in existence, 
even if she were not always with me." 

" Yes, I see," said Harry, his blue eyes staring 
hard at the carpet. He looked up suddenly, and 
said, "Wouldn't you like to see Mrs. Crosby.?" 

"Why, of course I would," said Alice. "You 
talk as if she were in the next room." 

"Ah ! but she isn't, more's the pity," said 
Harry moodily. 

Harry was not a letter-writing man, and he was 
the worst of diplomatists ; yet, when he left Alice 



1 82 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 

that afternoon, he wrote what he imagined to be 
a diplomatic letter to Celia Crosby. 

About this time Dinsmore began to notice an 
unaccountable behavior on the part of his young 
friend. "Why, Ashley! you are nervous," Cor- 
nelius would say affably. "■ What do you mean 
by having nerves t A man has no business with 
them at your age." How was he to know, that, 
when Harry's fingers drummed restlessly on the 
table, they were seized with a startling desire to 
clutch the unexceptionable collar of his host's 
coat } How was he to see the blue flash under 
Harry's eyelids when the young man was looking 
at nothing higher than the floor } 

If Harry had been asked for an explanation, 
he could probably have given no very definite 
account of his state of mind. 

He was unaccountably angry that the colonel 
should be Alice Dinsmore's father, and he had 
had an ugly suspicion of the man of late. Harry 
was not ordinarily suspicious until he had been 
once deceived. 

To Alice he was always the same. Her father 
and lover worried her sometimes ; her friend, 
never. He was always kind, sweet-tempered, 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 83 

genial, with that fine deference of tone and man- 
ner that touched and flattered her so keenly. 
'* It is good to know that any one thinks so well 
of me," she said to herself. " I think I am im- 
proving under it. I wonder if any one was ever 
flattered into goodness before." 

Of course she saw Harry's attitude toward her 
through the rosy medium which surrounds the 
corner of a woman's intelligence in which she 
judges of an admirer's attentions and relation 
to her. 

Harry probably had no conscious ideal of her 
goodness. He was not a man to have conscious 
ideals. His behavior to her was partly an old 
boyish reverence for womanhood, and partly the 
considerate regard of a gentleman who sees a 
girl placed in an exceptional position, whose pecu- 
liarities he understands far better than she does, 
and bearing herself, as it seems to him, very well. 
And it was, in part, the consciousness that this 
girl was Alice Dinsmore : not a thought of her 
goodness, or her womanly conduct, or her uncon- 
sciousness, or her possible wrongs, but only of 
her sweet self. 

Such were the springs of Harry's conduct to 



1 84 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Alice at this time when she so needed a friend. 
Not that he ever analyzed them himself, for he 
did not : analysis was not his forte. 

By the time Alice had realized and accepted 
all her difficulties and disappointments in New 
York, the winter had worn well into January. 
She now felt a constant and increasing nervous- 
ness in her position. 

She could not account for it, and it annoyed 
her. ** Have I grown a fine lady, or a foolish old 
woman, that I can scarcely tolerate my father and 
his friends 1 " she asked herself angrily. 

If the mood had been less uncomfortable, her 
anger would have been less. She admitted this 
one day, as she put on her Gainsborough hat 
before the glass. She never could frown at her- 
self in a Gainsborough hat. 

She had a woman's common faith in millinery ; 
and she considered it a pity that Kenneth could 
not see her in her dark furs, and her winter 
dresses, in rich, strange colors that fashion was 
just bringing into use. She had been photo- 
graphed in that hat, for his especial benefit ; but 
she was obliged to admit that the attempt was 
not altogether a success. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 85 

Kenneth wrote : " It may be bad taste on my 
part, but I should like a little more of your face 
and a little less of that furry bonnet. I humbly 
apologize, if it is not a bonnet." Alice laughed : 
she did not object to criticism of this sort. 

She had the letter in the pocket of the dress 
she wore that day. Indeed, Mr. Lawrence's let- 
ters crackled suspiciously in many of her pockets 
that winter. Her imagination pictured dramatic 
occasions when she should drop one of them out 
of her handkerchief, and be instantly and wrath- 
fully called to account by her father ; but nothing 
of the kind had happened as yet. 

Something else happened to her as she was 
walking up Broadway that winter afternoon, — 
something strange, and not at all agreeable. 

The beginning of it was, that she wore a 
charming costume, and she noticed that her very 
graceful skirts attracted side glances of ladylike 
approval. '' That respectful stare," she said, 
"which makes one feel so comfortable." 

She saw one young lady whose gaze was quite 
open and undisguised. She began at the edge 
of Alice's skirt, and looked gradually up : in a 
moment the gaze would reach her face. In a 



1 86 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

moment ; but, in the mean time, Alice had darted 
through a convenient store-door, and stood, dizzy 
and confused with the rapid beating of her heart, 
before the astonished saleswoman. 

She asked for Jacqueminot roses, but was hard 
to please. The silk flowers had an unpleasant 
purplish tinge : the others stained one's dre^s 
and fingers. She was not thinking about roses. 
She was thinking, "Am I out of my senses, that 
I run away from an acquaintance like this 1 " 

She had known the girl who looked at her 
dress for one of Celia's young neighbors of the 
past summer; and, at sight, of this familiar face, 
the dread that had been haunting her for weeks 
seemed to grow into an overpowering terror ; and, 
before she had time to reason or resolve, she had 
run away — from what } From five minutes' chat 
with a chance acquaintance. 

Alice went home rather drearily. She went to 
her room, and closed its doors opening into the 
parlor and hall, and drew her low chair into the 
curtained window. She never tired of looking 
down into the street. She had longed for 
streets in winter as field-loving natures long for 
the spring meadows. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 8/ 

That day the pavements were clean and dry ; 
the pale sunlight fell on the brick houses oppo- 
site, and the straight edges of their roofs stood 
out against the cold, bright winter sky. 

She had walked briskly in the cold air. Her 
room was warm, and she soon began to feel a 
luxurious drowsiness stealing over the doubts and 
difficulties of her thoughts. 

She drew one of the curtains forward between 
her and the window, and pulled the other around 
her chair on the inner side. They met in a tent- 
like fold over her head as she leaned back on her 
sloping cushions. 

At odd moments, when nervous women worry 
themselves into headaches and dyspepsia, Alice 
had a queer habit of falling calmly and unexpect- 
edly asleep, like a baby or a kitten. 

She did so now, and must have slept some 
time ; for when she woke, and pushed aside the 
curtain that screened her from the window, the 
pale sunlight was gone from the opposite houses. 

After a drowsy instant, she heard voices in the 
next room ; and, after another little space, real- 
ized that it was the sound of them that had 
roused her. Next, she thought the parlor door 



1 88 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

must be ajar: the draught made by shutting some 
other door had caused its latch to spring. Still 
she gave no attention to the speakers in the other 
room. 

At last a word caught her languid notice. 

" Decoy t " said the deeper voice of the two. 

Involuntarily she sat up, and began to listen. 
The lighter voice answered, — plainly a man's 
voice, but pitched on the shrill upper tones, — 
*' Attraction, I should say. Like his Madeira — 
very good Madeira — and his Havana brand. 
Clever fellow, Dinsmore. Makes use of his 
daughter " — 

His daughter! and she was behind the curtain, 
and the door ajar. 

Alice felt her old, blind terror close in upon her 
with a sense of physical suffocation, with a sense 
that the room swung around her in dizzy circles, 
— circles that widened, and left her sitting still 
and rigid in some great, unfamiliar space. 

After a moment the physical sensations left 
her, and she could listen again ; but they were 
talking of something else. In her moment of 
confusion she had lost the connection. 

The second voice went on, " Oh ! Ashley can 



AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 19} 

afford it. The fellow has some shrewdness of his 
own, and " -^ 

Alice pulled the curtain slightly, and its rings 
rattled on the pole above. The speaker did not 
hear it, but again she lost a sentence. 

Still the thin treble voice, and this time a light 
sneering laugh ran through its tones. " She 
know 1 Of course not. They never do. There 
is only one thing more astonishing than what 
women know ; that is, what they don't know." 

Alice sprang up, and pushed the curtain aside ; 
and this time its rings rattled loudly. There was 
a pause, and then heavy steps, and others, light 
and adroit, moving away toward the inner room. 

The door of her room stood open not more 
than half an inch. She closed it, and began to 
pace up and down. 

She felt like a wild creature caught in a trap. 
It was none the better for being a vague, familiar 
terror that had sprung into reality. It is bad to 
be beaten by a new foe ; worse to be conquered 
at last by the enemy we have resisted, evaded, 
barred out, fled from in vain. 

She was wild with rage and fright. She was 
stunned, confused, frenzied, at once. She was still 



.yO AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

young enough to cry out that this could not 
last, that she must have help, — young enough 
to believe that she would have help, sure, swift, 
and acceptable. Help ! but from whom ? From 
her father, who had betrayed her ? From Celia, 
who was far away ? From Miss Eunice ? From 
Kenneth ! Where were her wits, not to have 
thought of Kenneth ! 

She would write to him. He would come to 
her : he would come at once. He would tell her 
what to do. This thought of his authority was 
as sweet as it had once been bitter. 

She ran to her desk, and began to write with 
eager, trembling fingers, she scarcely knew what. 

An intolerable shame swept over her, and 
blinded her as she wrote. Shame for her father, 
and for herself ; shame that she had been blind, 
not innocently and nobly, but foolishly and wil- 
fully ; shame at the petty meanness, the con- 
temptible degradation, of the whole affair ; shame 
at what the men had said of her, — bad enough 
to her woman's judgment, what might it mean to 
theirs } 

Her letter was finished at last. She would 
ring for Lena. No, she would not ring for Lena : 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. I9I 

she would mail it herself. In her fevered, excited 
state she distrusted every one, even the innocent, 
stolid German. 

She looked about for her hat and cloak. Then 
she remembered that she had left them, as usual, 
on a chair in the parlor — no, in the dining-room. 

It did not occur to her that she could at least 
send Lena for these. Instead, she threw a heavy 
scarf of black lace around her head and shoulders, 
and ran hastily down-stairs. She went out to the 
letter-box, then back into the hall, and ran up- 
stairs. 

She had barely closed her own door when that 
of the parlor opened, and steps went out, and 
down the stairs. Dinsmore's visitors were tired 
of waiting for him. 

In a moment Lena admitted some one else, — 
some one who inquired for " Miss Dinsmore " in 
a frank, jolly young voice. And Alice knew the 
voice for Harry Ashley's. 

A delicious feeling of relief and comfort rushed 
over her. Here was protection, sympathy, conso- 
lation, kindness. Here was her friend ; all in one 
word, here was Harry ! 

She ran into the parlor, and met him half-way. 



192 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

"Ah ! Miss Dinsmore," began Harry gayly, and 
then he caught the look of her face. "Why, 
what is the matter ? what has happened ? " he 
asked abruptly. 

" O Harry ! " she said, and did not know how 
she had called him. 

Involuntarily he held out both hands to her. 
She threw herself into his arms, and sobbed on 
his shoulder, " O Harry ! Harry ! Harry ! " 



AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 193 



XII. 

" 'Tis well to be merry and wise, 
'Tis well to be honest and true ; 
'Tis well to be off with the old love, 
Before you are on with the new." 

At that particular moment Harry was proba- 
bly the most astonished young man in the city ; 
and, delightful as his position was from some 
points of view, it was not without its embarrass- 
ments. 

In the first place, no man knows exactly what 
to do with a crying woman. And then Harry was 
instantly and fully aware that her embrace was 
not intended for him, — was not, in fact, a personal 
matter at all. And he was very conscious of the 
exquisite weight and warmth of a beautiful girl in 
his arms — and this girl, of all the world! He 
allowed her to cry a little without interference, 
and held her in a light, distant clasp. 

Alice continued to sob ; at intervals little shud- 



194 ^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

ders ran through her frame, and she nestled 
slightly against his shoulder. 

She said " Harry " again in a smothered tone, 
because her face was pressed against his coat ; 
and then, " So glad you are here ! " 

And Harry said, '' Yes, I'm here. Don't cry. 
You shall if you like, though. You shall do just 
as you like. You sha'n't be teased and wor- 
ried." 

It was not very intelligible, perhaps ; but it was 
consoling, and that was better. 

Harry did not apprehend any very startling 
cause for this scene. He had not an excitable 
imagination, and his little theory of women and 
their vagaries easily adapted itself to the occasion. 
Girls probably cried for unexplained and insuffi- 
cient causes, and required a little vague, timely 
consolation. If he could chance upon the accept- 
able sort, it was all right, every thing was all 
right. 

After some moments she lifted her face, small 
and white in its frame of black. " How good 
you are ! " she said disconnectedly. *' How kind 
and sensible ! Any one else would ask questions, 
and vex and bother me." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 95 

Harry looked down at her steadily. His blue 
eyes were very kind and clear. 

She bowed her face on his shoulder, and again 
the light trembling motion ran through her figure. 

*' Something terrible has happened," she said 
distinctly. 

In spite of himself Harry started perceptibly. 
For the first time he connected her agitation with 
the ugly suspicion that had haunted his own 
mind. His quick, comprehensive thought was, 
"Dinsmore has behaved like a rascal." 

Instantly Alice raised her head and looked at 
him. " What is the matter } " she cried in a shrill, 
high voice. "What do you know about my 
father .'' " Then, with a quick, violent movement, 
she sprang away from him, and ran and flung her- 
self in one corner of the sofa, rocking to and fro, 
with her face hidden in her hands. " Now I have 
told you all, — every thing, every thing ! " 

Harry took half a moment to find his scattered 
wits. Then he came over to her. " Miss Dins- 
more." 

She sat still, and began to listen. 

'* You have not told me any thing, remember 
that : I understand nothing at all." 



196 AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

She sat quite still for some time. By and by- 
she looked up out of her handkerchief, and made 
an unexpected remark : " You might sit down. 
It doesn't improve matters for you to stand in 
the middle of the room." 

Harry sat down, but he did not reply. He 
delicately refrained from urging her confidence, 
and aside from this he had nothing to say. 

After a time she put her handkerchief away 
altogether. She made an effort to look at him 
quietly and steadily ; but her color fluttered 
painfully from white to pink, from pink to 
white. 

''You must think me out of my senses," she 
said piteously. "And I caiit explain to you: I 
wish I could." 

Meantime Harry had been thinking to some 
purpose. He leaned forward, and laid one hand 
on the little gilded arm of her sofa. "Suppose 
you let me explain to you } " he suggested. 

Alice stared. " Oh, do ! " she said eagerly. It 
was pleasant and unexpected to have this painful 
process of explanation taken out of her hands. 

Harry hesitated ; then he raised his clear, boy- 
ish eyes to her face. She found time to think 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 9/ 

how blue they were, though her mind was so full 
of other things. 

'' It is all supposition, you know ; and very likely 
I shall make blunders, and say something disa- 
greeable. Shall I go on .? " 

"Oh! yes," said Alice: '*go on." 

"Then, I am supposing that you have heard 
something that annoys you, — some rumor, non- 
sense, about — well, about your father. Shall I 
go on t " 

Alice had winced noticeably, but she said, " Go 
on," though in rather a fainter tone. 

"It is awfully awkward," said Harry; "but I 
suppose I must go on now. Let us say, for in- 
stance, that you have heard I am losing at cards 
to the colonel, — Col. Dinsmore." He was get- 
ting hot and nervous under the self-imposed task. 

"Yes!" said Alice. "Oh! do go on. Is it 
true.?" 

Poor Harry made a desperate attack on the 
very downy fringe that adorned his upper lip. 

" It is of no consequence, if it is true," he said, 
averting his eyes ; " but — I don't see how I can 
get on with this, I'm sure. I feel like a puppy 
already — but what I hope you understand — what 



198 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

of course you understand — is, that it is all per- 
fectly straight — on the square — all right. I 
mean, that Col. Dinsmore has been at the game 
rather more years than I ; and, if he is the 
better player, it is very natural. It would be a 
strange thing if he were not. I hope you under- 
stand what I am trying to get at." 

Alice stood up suddenly, and laid both hands 
on his shoulders, almost forcibly preventing him 
from rising. "Why, of course I understand," 
she said sweetly. '' How good you are ! " 

Harry blushed redder than ever. "Well, that 
is a turn I did not expect," he said, standing up 
as she released him. " I should not have been 
surprised if you had turned me out of the house. 
But you see, I thought, if you had been hearing 
some nonsense with no -truth in it, it was better 
to tell you the truth, even if I had to refer to the 
other, and that was awkward ; and I'm sure it 
was. I never was so badly scared in my life." 

His words gave Alice a great — indeed, a dis- 
proportionate — relief. Was this one of the ideas 
she had made into such horrible, torturing spec- 
tres .? 

How she had magnified and distorted them ! 



AN- HONORABLE SURRENDER. 1 99 

how small they were on a clear and reasonable 
view ! What a relief it was to see them through 
that practical masculine judgment that women 
value so highly ! 

What he said was too pleasant to be doubted in 
any respect. If at some future hour she were to 
doubt it, why, so much the worse for that future 
hour. 

" I had worried myself into a dreadful state of 
mind," she said, passing her hand over her fore- 
head. '' I am glad you talked me out of it." 

"I am going to ask another question," said 
Harry. " Where did you hear all this ? " 

" I suppose you want to know who is to blame 
for it," said Alice, looking up at him. "I don't 
see what good it would do for you to know. The 
gossip is usually a woman, and then what can you 
do about it .'' " 

" Ah ! but if the gossip is not a woman } " 

" Even so, in these days you can't call him out 
for talking about — my father." She narrowly 
escaped a slip of the tongue, and colored high as 
she finished her sentence. 

Harry was not to know the worse half of her 
story : indeed, she herself was trying to forget it. 



200 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

**No, I can't," said Harry. "I shall not make 
a spectacle of myself. But I think I could per- 
suade him to find some other way of passing his 
time, beside talking malicious nonsense. You 
see, I can't have you annoyed in this way, if it 
can be helped." 

It would have been good to see this young fel- 
low, with his fresh-colored, boyish face, and his 
air of elderly wisdom and protection ; his blushes 
and his awkwardness, and his fine manly chivalry, 
that he would never have called by so grand a 
name. 

Alice shook her head. "You can't always 
hinder my being worried. I don't think you can 
hinder it now." 

"Couldn't Mrs. Crosby straighten matters for 
you } " asked Harry. 

" What faith you have in Mrs. Crosby ! " said 
Alice, smiling. "So have I, but unfortunately 
she is in Richmond." 

"Not Richmond, Philadelphia now. And she 
is coming home next week," concluded Harry 
triumphantly. " That is what I came to tell you, 
when you frightened — that is, I was so sur- 
prised" — He stopped short in confusion, be- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 201 

lieving he had said the most awkward thing 
imaginable. 

Alice looked at him an instant with sparkling 
eyes, then she suddenly burst out laughing. Har- 
ry stared. "I know I behaved shockingly," she 
gasped, when she could speak ; '* and it is shock- 
ing to laugh now, but it was funny. I am so glad 
Celia is coming home, and she will settle matters 
for me if any one can ; and I have been lonely and 
homesick, and frightened about every thing lately. 
But I must laugh : it was funny." 

She went off with another ringing peal, and 
left Harry still bewildered. 

Not that he was stupid ; but her behavior was 
undeniably surprising, and then these side-lights 
on the main question puzzled him. A subject 
was serious, or it was not serious, just as day was 
light, and night darkness. His moral vision had 
a tendency to translate most things into distinct, 
primary colors. 

At last Alice stopped laughing. ''\ am glad 
Celia is coming home," she said. " How did you 
hear of it } Did she write you t Did you write 
her.? I believe you have something to do with 
it." 



202 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

"No, upon my word," said Harry. "I heard it 
from Miss Burton," having a lucky recollection 
that Miss Burton was in town. 

Harry told his little fiction with a look of 
conscious rectitude and innocence. Blonde and 
cherubic children wear the same expression when 
they are questioned in regard to the sugar-bowl. 

** I am glad she is coming back, for an}^ rea- 
son," said Alice. " Have you any thing else nice, 
to tell me } " 

She sat down upon a chair whose narrow 
carved back rose above her head. Harry took 
one of the Queen-Anne chairs opposite. 

" There is something else, but I don't consider 
it nice," said Harry. *' It is a bore. I have got 
to go across." 

** Across.-*" echoed Alice, "just what, for in- 
stance } " 

Harry laughed : " The Atlantic this time. I 
mean, I have to go to England." He paused, and 
looked at Alice : her eyes looked at • him without 
responding, and she did not speak. 

He went on, " You see, last spring I fell in with 
some English people, friends of mine ; that is, I 
have known Frank Dillingham four or five years. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 203 

He brought his mother and sisters over here, and 
then by the last of June he wanted to go back 
again ; while the ladies wanted to stay and run 
about the States this winter, with some American 
connections of theirs. And I thought of going 
over in the spring, so of course I offered to look 
after them. Now Mrs. Dillingham wants to go 
back a month earlier, and she takes it for granted 
that I am going too. I suppose I am," added 
Harry ruefully : " I don't see how I can avoid it." 

"You are meeting the common fate of the 
good - natured American," said Alice coldly. 
*'You are being made useful. You can't avoid 
it." 

Rising from her chair as she spoke, she v/ent 
over to the long mirror, and began to unwind the 
black lace from her head and throat. In her 
haste, she had tied it in an inextricable knot, just 
behind the ear. She pulled it impatiently this 
way and that, with her arms raised, and her hands 
behind her head. 

Suddenly she turned, and looked fiercely at 
Harry. 

** You don't wish to avoid going. There is no 
reason why you should." 



204 ^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Her life and thoughts were full of graver issues 
than his conning and going, and yet she could not 
spare him. She was fond of him, she leaned 
upon his gay young companionship and his hon- 
est friendliness, and she could not spare him. 
She was in a blind, impatient rage, like the fury 
of a child whose undisputed possession is taken 
from it. 

Harry sprang up, and came over behind her: 
she saw his young, flushed, eager face in the 
glass. 

" Don't," she said quickly : " I mean, don't 
scold. I know I am terribly cross." 

She was still struggling with the black scarf, 
and Harry took it out of her little cold hands. 
She let them fall at her sides with a sigh of relief. 

He had a certain skill in handling the buttons 
of gloves, and soft wools, and laces like this. It 
was unexpected and incongruous somehow with 
his broad shoulders, but women liked the small 
services all the better on this account. 

"Why, you were drawing this tighter. I 
thought girls understood these things," he said. 
He was quiet enough, but for the light in his eyes 
and the boyish color in his face. He said noth- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 205 

ing more until he had untied the knot, and 
dropped the lace from his hands. Then he said 
quite softly and quickly, " Tell me not to go. Miss 
Dinsmore. Tell me to stay, and I won't go for 
all the Dillinghams in England ; I won't go for 
the world." 

Alice started, but not away ; and she looked up 
in his sincere, pleading eyes, his fair, fresh face so 
near her own. Through a whirl of confusion, 
some things grew plain to her, — that she was 
sorry if not surprised, that she feared she was a 
little triumphant, that she did not mean to de- 
ceive or play with Harry, who was so manly and 
so true to her. 

At this moment she glanced in the mirror. 
She gave a startled cry, and put her head down 
on Harry's shoulder, and clung to him with both 
hands ; from fright, from trust, but not from love, 
or the treachery of a coquette. 

Harry's arm closed around her instantly ; but 
he too looked in the glass, and saw there a face. 

It was the face of Dinsmore, shrewd, cool, 
handsome, with an unhandsome sneer around the 
auburn mustache. 

Alice could never clearly recall or account for 



206 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

her own part in the moments that followed. A 
strange slowness and dulness seemed to possess 
her mind. Observation was unclouded ; but she 
was slow to reason upon what she saw, slower to 
act upon her own reasoning. 

She knew that Harry placed her gently in a 
chair, that he crossed to her father in the door, 
that Dinsmore said something in a sarcastic tone 
which Harry answered in a grave one, and that 
finally they went toward the inner room together, 
Dinsmore's dramatic sternness rather losing in 
effect against the new, youthful dignity of his 
companion. 

In a very short time she heard the closing of 
the farther dining-room door, and Harry came 
back alone. By this time she thought it was 
possible to act. 

She rose, and went a little way towards him. 
" You surprised me so," she began abruptly : " I 
did not know " — 

Harry looked at her, his kind young look, only 
with a new gravity in it. He always seemed sin- 
gularly young to Alice, and this time there was a 
touch of pathos in the thought. 

But she did not yet tell him of her engagement. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 20/ 

" I did not mean to take an advantage of you," he 
said. 

" Oh, no ! " she said quickly, and put out her 
hand, not quite knowing why she did so. 

Harry took it, but with no air of possession ; 
and they walked down the room toward the mir- 
ror, he holding her small hand in that light, im- 
personal clasp. 

*'I did not know" — she began again help- 
lessly. 

He looked down at her. " I thought you knew 
— last summer." 

"Ah ! that was why I was so sure." 

Harry looked as if he did not understand. The 
situation was hard upon him in all respects. His 
wooing had been completely robbed of romance 
and the eloquence of impulse, and he had no 
natural eloquence to supply in its stead. 

He released her hand, and stood off a little 
way. " Will you give me an answer when I come 
from England } I shall come back in the next 
steamer." 

"That is so soon," stammered Alice. She 
meant to speak of Kenneth Lawrence. 

Harry's face clouded. "I dare say you don't 



208 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

understand," he said gently; "but it is rather 
hard on me, going away at all." 

"I do not mean to be selfish," she said 
slowly. 

He smiled. "Tell me to come back in the 
next steamer. You need not promise any 
thing." 

"Oh, yes! come back," she said mechanically. 
It seemed to her that she could say nothing 
else. 

He still looked at her with controlled eyes. 

"Now I will go," he said at last ; "but I shall 
not. leave the city until Mrs. Crosby comes. If 
you should want me, you will send, won't you } 
To your old acquaintance, you know." 

"Oh, how good you are!" said Alice for the 
third time. 

"Don't. I can't stand it," he said quickly. 
"I dare say you don't understand that either. 
You will send 1 " 

" Oh, yes ! " said Alice gratefully. 

"Thanks. And now good-by." 

" Good-by, Harry," she said holding out her 
hand. 

"Ah! thanks once more," he said as he took 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 209 

it. And then he looked at her rather wistfully, 
but she did not seem to understand. 

In a moment he was gone, and she remained 
standing in the same attitude, with her back to 
the mirror and its glittering reflection of the 
white-and-gold room. 



210 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



XIII. 

" She had no gratuitously ill-natured feeling, or egoistic pleas- 
ure in making men miserable. She only had an intense objection 

to their making her miserable.'* 

' George Eliot. 

The events recorded in the last chapter hap- 
pened on a Wednesday afternoon, and on Friday 
morning Lena came in to her young mistress with 
the card of Mr. Kenneth Lawrence. 

Alice was sitting before her little toilet-table. 
She saw Lena's square, German-blonde reflection 
in the swinging mirror, and dismissed her without 
turning away. For a moment or two after the girl 
had left her, she sat quite still in the same position. 

It was her misfortune never to have to deal 
with a simple emotion in regard to Lawrence. 

She was very glad to see him : he had come to 
her quickly, promptly, as a lover should, and of 
course she was very well pleased ; but at the same 
time she was a little embarrassed and uncertain 
what to do with him. 



AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2 1 1 

She no longer wished to tell him the whole of 
her story ; indeed, it did not seem possible to do 
so : yet successful concealment looked more im- 
possible still. Withal she was always a little 
afraid of him, and yet she was so very glad he 
had come. *' He can't begin being terrible at 
once," she thought, rising before the glass. And 
then she looked at her charming image. 

She wore the dead-white dress with its sugges- 
tion of pale-gold satin and its creamy lace, and a 
knot of purple violets at her breast. She was a 
woman who wore flowers quite informally. 

" Ah ! I don't think he can be terrible at all." 

She stood a moment in the little angle of the 
hall, between the door of her room and the door 
of the parlor. Afterwards she always associated 
a peculiar stage of nervous uncertainty with that 
little dim angle of the hall. 

When she opened the parlor door, she only 
remembered that she was very glad to see Ken- 
neth. 

Lawrence was standing before the draped, 
unused fireplace. This was a sign of his con- 
trolled nervousness. He would have liked to 
walk about the room, he found it morally impossi- 



212 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

ble to Stay in a chair : so he compromised by stand- 
ing on the hearth-rug, and vibrating mentally. 

When Alice opened the door he very nearly 
rushed across the little room ; and, though he be- 
gan with '' My darling," he followed it instantly 
with, " What has happened ? What did you mean 
by your note ? " 

Alice drew away to the distance of half a yard. 
She was bitterly mortified and angry. 

"Nothing important has happened, after all," 
she said dryly. " I am afraid I have been very 
foolish. I am sorry I did not tell you at once." 

She did not stop to estimate the anxiety which 
conquered even his epicurean delight in her. 
She did not in the least appreciate her power 
in drawing from a super-subtle nature this per- 
fectly unmixed feeling. 

Lawrence was experiencing another unmixed 
feeling. 

He looked at her with a surprise that belonged 
to both halves of her sentence. 

"Why, do you know what you wrote me.-*" he 
demanded. He took three or four letters out of 
the breast-pocket of his coat, and hastily shifted 
them in his hand. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 213 

Alice looked at him with increasing displeas- 
ure. Her passionate excitement belonged to the 
day before yesterday, a remote epoch to which 
she had no desire to return. 

" I have not the least idea," she said, in answer 
to his question, 

Lawrence looked up at her tone, and recovered 
his usual perception. 

He dropped the four envelopes, and took her 
hands in his. "Why, Alice!" he said tenderly. 
"What did I do.? Did I frighten you.? Was I 
rough with you .? You don't know how you 
frightened me. You frightened away all my 
observation : I could not even see how I was 
behaving myself." 

She allowed herself to be drawn towards him. 
In the step she made, she trod on two of the 
dropped envelopes. They were thick, and made 
themselves felt through her thin slipper. 

"Ah! well," she said archly, after a moment; 
" I never undertook to like you without your 
observation." 

"And now tell me what was so terrible," said 
Lawrence. He picked up the letters, and stood 
up with an inquiring expression. 



214 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Alice looked at the envelopes. ''Let me see 
what I wrote you," she said. 

He held out a cream-colored note. 

"Let me see the others," she insisted, laughing. 
'' I ought to know what sort of company you give 
my letters." 

Lawrence handed them to her with an air of 
mock resignation. 

'* I don't care about the yellow envelopes," said 
she ; " but what is this "i It looks uncommonly 
like a young lady's handwriting ; and / never 
wrote such a neat, trim little address in my life." 

"Ah! she wanted my autograph," said Law- 
rence. " You see, she was not aware that I had 
resigned my public capacity, — supposing I ever 
had a public capacity to resign." 

"Do you mind that.?" asked Alice, with a 
quick, grave change of tone. 

" Being asked for my autograph } Ah ! if you 
knew how I like it," he said, straightening him- 
self and assuming an air of complacency. 

"Pshaw!" said AUce. "You are absurd 
enough. I dare say your young lady was absurd 
too." She gave him back the note. 

"No, she was not absurd," said Kenneth, put- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 21 5 

ting it away. " She was a young woman of taste 
and intelligence — naturally." 

Alice still held her own note in her hands : she 
was crumpling one corner of it, which she looked 
at without seeing. 

She looked up at Kenneth with a sweet, uncer- 
tain expression. '* Do you mind finding nothing 
has happened } " she asked, her sensitive color 
changing. " I mean, do you mind being sent for 
just because I was foolish } " 

*'*Just because,'" echoed Lawrence, with a 
lover's folly, a lover's wisdom, ah ! yes, and a lov- 
er's argument. ''What do you suppose I would 
like to happen .? " he said teasingly. "■ Do you 
think I came here to enjoy your misfortunes, 
whatever they might be } " 

Alice turned away with a little, impatient move- 
ment. '' Come over to this end of the room," she 
said abruptly, going over to the little brocaded 
sofa. " I always like this part of the room best. 
Just my fancy : it is not really prettier or uglier 
than the rest." 

Lawrence took the chair with the carved back : 
there was very little of it to be seen above his 
head. 



2l6 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Alice took her note out of its envelope, and 
read it with an air of making its acquaintance. 
She put it back again, and handed it to Lawrence 
without looking at him. 

"That is very confused," she said abstractedly. 

*'Yes," said Lawrence. He did not use the 
interrogative inflection, but his tone had all the 
insistent quality of a question. 

Alice looked at him almost as if she were un- 
willing to do so. She said slowly, *'And now 
you want to know what all this means." 

"Why is there any objection to my knowing.?" 
said Lawrence, in profound astonishment. 

"Of course you have a right to know" — be- 
gan Alice. 

" Oh ! my right ! " he interrupted with a kind 
of impatient disgust. He felt that he had really 
behaved very well. The next step would be, to 
feel that he would behave well no longer. 

This step he had not yet taken. 

" I do not mean to insist on any rights," he 
resumed more quietly. 

He stood up beside the chimney-piece : he could 
resist the impulse no longer. " I came here fear- 
ing to find you in trouble, — in some very serious 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 21/ 

trouble," he said. '' Satisfy me that nothing of 
the sort exists, and I have no questions to ask." 

Alice still felt that she must go on. She had 
not ceased to feel compelled since the interview- 
began. 

She also rose, and came over to the low mantel, 
and stood leaning her right hand and wrist upon 
its edge. 

*' I had heard something terrible," she said in a 
low voice. " It was not true. You must under- 
stand that it was not true. It was about my 
father." 

Lawrence was aware that he controlled his face 
admirably. 

'*It was bad, disgraceful. But it was not true." 

Lawrence laid his hand heavily upon her wrist. 
She went on speaking with an effort. 
4^ "It was a scandal — about cards." She stopped 
and began to tremble violently. 

" It was not true," said Lawrence soothingly ; 
not that he believed the comforting assurance. 

He did not feel obliged or inclined to investi- 
gate the intricacies of Dinsmore's conduct. 

"There is worse to come," said Alice faintly. 
"My name was mentioned." 



2l8 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

'' Your name ! " cried Lawrence in a deep, 
rough voice. " How mentioned ? Tell me what 
was said, Alice. I can't stand this ! " 

''It was said" — began Alice. She stopped 
helplessly. " Must I go on } " 

Lawrence made a quick, impatient gesture. 

"It was said that — I — was useful to him, — 
to my father; that I — was — an attraction." 

Lawrence checked himself in an exclamation, 
— a violent one. It was characteristic of the 
man that he instantly added, "I beg your pardon." 

He did not regard his ejaculation as a cry out 
of the depths, but as an oath used in the pres- 
ence of a woman ; and he felt proportionately dis- 
gusted at having used it. 

He had taken his hand from her wrist, and 
started away from the mantel. 

He started into one of his conventional atti^ 
tudes, — an attitude like the portrait of a gentle- 
man, except that the gentleman's head was bent 
so as to give a very imperfect view of his well- 
drawn features. 

Alice stood still. She felt very helpless and 
neglected, very young and ignorant. It was one 
of the occasions that took from her her sense of 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 219 

experience in life. Was this the way one's lover 
behaved in a crisis ? 

Lawrence raised his head a couple of inches. 

"There is but one thing to do, Alice," he said 
deliberately. "You must leave this place at 
once." 

"The story was not true," Alice explained once 
more. It had become a matter of necessity with 
her to insist upon this. She was never quite 
certain to what point she believed it. 

" Exactly what do you mean by that t " asked 
Lawrence. " Is it not true that your name was 
mentioned } " 

Alice sat down before she answered. " Yes, 
my name was mentioned," she said in a low voice. 

Lawrence looked at her, gloomily at first, but 
his expression gradually brightened. **You do 
not appear to understand the matter. I am very 
glad you do not," with unmistakable fervor. "But 
of course you understand that I cannot have these 
things said of you." 

" Of the woman you mean to marry," said 
Alice ; but she said it very quietly. She stood up 
again, and said, " Do you wish me to go back to 
Unity .? " 



220 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" Yes, for the present, that will be best." Law- 
rence broke this up with a succession of little 
pauses. He was apparently going through with 
some more complicated process than forming his 
sentence. 

Alice looked at him with dry, bright eyes. 

"Well, I do not mean to go back. I know now 
that I never mean to go back. This is what I 
came for," with a gesture that included more than 
the room in all its glittering white-and-gold. " It 
may not be very good, but I shall stay." 

At the moment it seemed very bad to her, — 
very tawdry and dreary and lonely, infested with 
humiliations and disappointments. 

" Dear, why should you go back to Unity } " 
said Lawrence. '* There is something else to do. 
You have promised to marry me : marry me to- 
day, instead of in three months. There was 
never a reason for waiting, and now there is every 
reason why we should not wait. There is not a 
presentable scruple in the way. Marry me to-day, 
Alice : why not t " 

Alice looked at him with the same dry, brilliant 
gaze. "Thank you for offering me the alterna- 
tive," she said gravely. 



AJ^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 221 

"Good heavens ! " cried Lawrence in his aston- 
ished voice. *' Can I urge you like an opera- 
tenor ? I can't imagine any thing more brutal — 
under the circumstances." 

Alice blushed deeply. She began hastily, 
** Now you are " — but she suppressed the adjec- 
tive. 

*' You ought to know that I will not marry you 
in this way," she said. " I may not be a person 
of romantic views. I do not think I am. But I 
do not wish to make my wedding-day a matter of 
convenience. I do not wish to marry you in this 
hasty, unthought-of way, because — it is impossi- 
ble for me to stay in my father's house." Her 
hot, shining eyes suffused with tears. 

''Don't, don't," urged Lawrence in his some- 
what conventional tones of distress. " You shall 
do as you like — exactly as you like." 

-Alice brushed her tears away. " I wonder if 
you mean to make conditions with me t " 

**No, no," protested Lawrence. "Do I not say 
you shall do as you choose .? " 

" Suppose I choose to remain here .'* " said 
Alice quietly. 

Lawrence frowned. " It is impossible," he said 



222 AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

with his deliberate gentleness. *' I cannot ima- 
gine it." 

*' Extend your imagination," said Alice: "I 
mean to remain here. I do not mean to go back 
to Unity, I do not mean to marry you to-day." 
Her eyes gave one passionate flash. ** I do not 
mean to marry you at all." 

She went on instantly, excitedly, " If I marry 
you I shall be a miserable woman, and I will not 
be miserable. I have a right to my happiness, I 
have a right to escape from misery in any way that 
I can. I am afraid of you,- I always have been. 
I am afraid of the sacrifice you made for me, I am 
afraid of the day you will repent it ; I am afraid 
of your fineness, I am afraid of your strength. I 
am afraid of your ideal ; not of me, not of woman- 
hood, but of the woman your wife must be. I am 
a small creature. There is nothing deep or strong 
or brave in my nature, but I have been good enough 
to you. If you made me miserable, I should be 
worthless and vicious. If you frightened me, I 
should lie to you ; if you baffled and suppressed 
and thwarted me, I should do worse. I am afraid. 
That is what sets me out of your reach. You 
cannot argue with fear. No one can, you least 



AjV honorable surrender. 223 

of all. You know nothing about it : it is too 
gross, too simple, too ordinary. You had better 
leave me. I will not be made miserable." 

''I make you miserable!" cried Lawrence. 
'* Alice, I love you." 

She burst into tears. " Oh ! if that were an 
answer to either of us ! If I could look at life 
for one instant hke that ! " 

Lawrence took a step towards her, she raised 
her left hand. "Oh, no !" she said with the one 
visible sneer she had used. ''Pray retain — your 
good taste." 

It was enough : Lawrence never knew exactly 
how he got out of the room. In truth, he made 
the exit of a hero of melodrama. 

The uncomfortable suspicion of this aggra- 
vated whatever he felt of rage and pain, and the 
baffling sense of loss and defeat. 

Alice stood still after he had left her. She no- 
ticed two little strips of sunlight that fell between 
the window-curtains upon the floor, and she re- 
membered that it was still very early in the day. 
It was an impossible sort of time for any thing 
important to happen : there was no aesthetic fit- 
ness in the hour. 



224 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

She noticed that the sun brought out some 
slight, vivid touches of blue and crimson in the 
amber and fawn and wood-colored carpet. 

She had never observed those tiny circles of 
color before. 

They seemed to rise in the sun, and dance 
before her, — little rings of blue and crimson dan- 
cing in two narrow, dusty bands of light. 

By and by she heard her father's step upon the 
stairs. She thought she would like to avoid see- 
ing him ; but from some unaccountable dulness 
and heaviness that had taken possession of her, 
she was standing in the same place when he came 
in. 

**You are looking pale," he said in a tone of 
personal injury, *'pale and sallow. I wonder why 
you don't go out of doors in the morning ? 
Women never take care of their health." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 22$ 



XIV. 

" And ye shall walk in silk attire, 
And siller hae to spare, 
Gin ye'll consent to be his bride, 
Noi think o' iJonald mair." 

Celia Crosby arrived in New York early in the 
following week. 

The evening of her arrival, she received a call 
from a young gentleman who stood in the unfor- 
tunate predicament of being about to sail for 
Liverpool, while he had serious and absorbing 
interests in New York. He did not take a tragic 
view of the situation, however, — he was not a 
person of tragic views ; and Celia only discovered 
how serious the interests were, through his very 
ingenuous discretion. 

"At least I may wish you a prosperous voy- 
age," she said as he was leaving. 

"To Liverpool.?" he said, regarding her with 
his agreeable gaze. 



226 AN HO'NORABLE SURRENDER. 

"No," said Celia smiling: "from Liverpool to 
New York." 

"Ah! thanks," he said gravely. "That is bet- 
ter. From Liverpool to New York." 

But he went away with his jolly smile, and his air 
of having whatever he liked in this pleasant world. 

Next day Celia paid an early visit to Alice 
Dinsmore. When Alice came in, her friend re- 
ceived a genuine shock. In those few days she 
had grown perceptibly thin and pale, and a pa- 
thetic violet tinge showed under her eyes. 

" My dear girl ! what has happened to you } " 
said Celia in dismay. 

Alice smiled rather dismally. "A great deal 
has happened, and I mean to tell you all of it : so 
you had better take off your cloak." 

She told her story, sitting on a sofa-cushion 
with her head in Celia's lap. 

Celia was very well aware that something im- 
portant had happened. This much she had gath- 
ered from Harry's diplomacy by letter, and his 
later reserve of speech ; but it was beyond the 
cleverness of woman to divine the affair in detail, 
and Harry himself had no idea of the episode of 
Mr. Lawrence. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 22/ 

Alice did not suppress that. " I am determined 
to enjoy the relief of telling you every thing/' 
she said, " even if I am horribly sorry for it after- 
wards. I am not a confiding v^oman usually, but 
I feel the necessity now." 

After she had finished, Celia stroked her hair 
a few moments without speaking. Then she 
began to speak in her gentle, ordinary tones : it 
was such a comfort to Alice to hear any one speak 
in an ordinary way ! 

"Now, my dear, I have a proposal to make. 
Don't be alarmed : happily I am not a gentleman. 
I want you to come and visit me for a time." 

Alice looked up with her wide gaze. *' You 
think so too } " she said rather piteously. 

**Of course I think so," said Celia. ** I don't 
see why I should frighten you, but I see what you 
must do. I like your society very much. Come 
and pay me a visit." 

When she left she said decisively, '* I shall call 
for you this afternoon. Let us say five o'clock." 

It was necessary for Alice to tell her father of 
this arrangement, and it was also distinctly dis- 
agreeable. She found him in his room, where she 
went an hour after luncheon. 



228 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Cornelius was at his desk. He heard her state- 
ment with perfect good-temper. When she had 
finished, he stood up, and put his hands behind 
him, and assumed the unhandsome sneer. 

" So you are going to visit Mrs. Crosby," he said 
deHberately. *' That is very nice, and Mrs. Crosby 
is very kind, but — exactly what does this mean } " 

" Nothing remarkable," said Alice with a sort 
of tremulous flippancy. "So few things do." 

"Ah, very likely!" said Cornelius. "This 
means a few trifles, however. I don't like it, for 
one thing. Of course you are aware of that. 
And if you go, — mind, I have nothing to oppose 
to it, — I hope you have considered some — ah — 
permanent arrangement .'* Because I have a fancy 
you won't return here. I don't at all like your 
going, you know ; and — the fact is, I've a devil of 
a temper. I should be sorry to be disagreeable 
to you, Alice." 

" I do not mean to come back," said Alice 
almost in a whisper. 

" So I supposed, and very proper of you," said 
Dinsmore looking at her steadily with his light- 
hazel eyes. "Very proper indeed. Of course I 
might inquire why you are going. I have a little 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 229 

curiosity on the subject, but I shall not insist. 
Generally I don't insist, it is so seldom worth 
while. I suppose you have some notion in your 
brain. Women are ingenious in notions — not 
malicious ones. I dare say it would not interest 
me especially. And of course I might complain 
somewhat on my own account if I liked : I don't 
like, however. I think I have treated you very 
well. I believe I have not abused you. It is 
coarse to speak of what one does for another's 
happiness, but I believe you have had most of the 
things women like. We won't speak of it, how- 
ever : I have no desire to complain. I might 
pose as an injured man, you see; but I am not in 
the habit of posing." 

He kept the sneer upon his face, and held out 
a couple of fingers to be shaken. 

In some way those fingers held her fast for a 
moment, and he looked steadily, steadily at his 
daughter's face. 

All at once he threw his left hand up before his 
eyes. He had burst out crying like a woman. 
Facile, surface tears of his temperament and his 
race ! Alice knew their value well, but her own 
nerves were too unsteady to bear the sight. 



230 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

She turned away blindly, and left him standing 
there. She went out of the door, and closed it 
after her. 

She did not see him again. 

After this came the prosaic business of packing 
her trunk. She had never been so impatient of its 
petty, tiresome vexations : evidently the great con- 
cerns of her life did not shut her out from the small. 

Her hands trembled so that she could scarcely 
fold her dresses, — her pretty dresses in the rich, 
strange colors. She overlooked one of them by 
some means, and had to raise the heavy lid of her 
trunk again to put it in. 

At last she sat down, and cried like a child over 
her childish troubles. 

After this she put on her hat and cloak, and 
went into the white-and-gold parlor for the last 
time. The curtains were dropped before three of 
the windows, making the room dim ; but through 
the fourth, a side-window, some yellow rays 
slanted into the darkness. 

Alice fancied they had the soft look of spring 
in them : the day seemed misplaced from April. 

She wandered about restlessly, seeing her own 
figure repeated in the mirrors. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 23 I 

She thought she would never remember the 
room as empty. If she thought of the mirrors, 
she would see this dark, moving figure of a girl. 
In the mirror over the mantle she fancied she saw 
her own profile and that of Kenneth Lawrence, 
both sharply and clearly drawn. 

By and by Lena spoke with some one at the 
outer door, and then brought a message to Alice, 
" Mrs. Crosby's carriage waited : would Miss Dins- 
more come down } " 

*'Miss Dinsmore would come down at once;" 
but she dismissed Lena, and closed the door of 
the little dim, gay room. 

She knelt down by one of the little gilded 
chairs, and rested forward upon her crossed arms. 

She did not know how long she remained there. 
She had not meant to linger, she was quite ready 
to go ; but she felt dizzy and tired, faint with the 
heat of the room, and confused with the images 
in the mirrors. 

After a time, — she could not tell how long, — 
the door opened, and some one came in. 

A faint scent of hyacinth came in also ; a 
woman's heavy skirts rustled near her, and a cool, 
ungloved hand was laid upon her own. 



232 AA" HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

She looked up and saw Celia, then she rose to 
her feet. ** I meant to come down," she said in a 
confused, apologetic way. 

"Come now, dear," said Celia, still holding her 
hand. 

On the stairs, through the halls, and into the 
street, she kept that small, hot hand in her own. 

At first it seemed to Celia that Alice was 
changed to an incredible extent. Very soon she 
discovered that the appearance of change was 
caused by a number of superficial habits, which 
were as unlike the girl she had known as any 
thing well could be. 

Alice had developed a timidity and a reserve 
which were in direct opposition. 

She seemed to be unable to bear solitude, and 
to dread observation. She learned to retire be- 
hind books that she did not read, to shade her 
face from light that was not physically disagree- 
able, to put a cautious cheerfulness into her voice, 
and to move with premeditated briskness. 

She was quite frankly unhappy : that was not 
what she was trying to disguise ; and she v/as 
living reasonably under it, — better still, she was 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 233 

trying to outlive it as steadily and intelligently as 
possible. But she had not accurately surveyed her 
state of mind, had not measured its breadth and 
depth. It is probable that she never intended to 
do so : she would certainly not allow this liberty 
to another. 

She told Celia that she did not deserve any 
large measitre of sympathy. " I am not as un- 
happy as you think : perhaps I am not unhappy 
at all, in the way you think." 

Celia was a woman who believed in silence, but 
not in silence invariably. It was not easy to dis- 
cover Ceha's invariable beliefs. 

" It is not that I think you are so unhappy," 
she said. '* It is that I want to tell you some- 
thing." 

She waited a moment, and then broke out with 
her rare, very rare, impulsiveness : '' I want to 
tell you that you have not met with a loss such as 
you think. You never had so great a thing to 
lose. There is no exceptional life, such as girls 
make for themselves in their thoughts. Do I not 
know ? When I was most happy, I thought that 
was supreme, the world had seen nothing like it ; 
and when I was most miserable, I thought that 



234 ^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

was supreme too, and there was a degree of con- 
solation in thinking so. But it was a mistake, — it 
was all a mistake. I had met with a very common 
fate. To be sure, I had made my dreams around 
a coarse creature, but that was all. It was a pity, 
but it was not very remarkable. My husband 
was not a deliberate villain, and I was not a 
creature under an exceptional curse. I was sim- 
ply the victim of my imagination, — it was so 
large. I do not want you to be the victim of 
imagination, to regret what seemed to you a 
possible life. I tell you it is of all things impos- 
sible." 

Alice looked at her wistfully, but then her eyes 
were of a wistful color. " I have not believed 
any thing like that," she said. She added grave- 
ly, *' I wish I had." 

"Ah! I know that stage too," said Celia. 
"There is a time when a belief like that for the 
world seems better than any personal happiness." 

The strange revival of passion was beginning 
to die out of her ; and she added with a smile, 
" But, after all, we can't do without personal hap- 
piness. That is precisely what I want for you." 

" I have never cared about having a belief for 



AJV HOXOKABLE SURRENDER. 235 

the world," said Alice. '' Perhaps my chance of 
personal happiness would be all the better if I 
had." 

At another time she asked Celia how people 
recovered from a serious experience. " I suppose 
this is a serious experience. It is not so very 
bad, though it is bad enough ; but I do not want 
to be changed by it. I do not want to be made 
serious, or to have large, sad ideas. I have lost 
one or two figures out of my view of life, and 
I can spare them ; but I want to keep my own 
place. If I was frivolous before, I want to be 
frivolous now : I do not want to advance. I want 
to keep my comfortable, narrow thoughts, and my 
strong sense of my own personality, and to feel 
that I am in the centre of my world. I want to 
feel young." 

** I do not think you will advance too fast," 
said Celia. *' We go forward by a sort of ebb 
and flow% if we go at all. There is a good deal 
of retrograde movement in any kind of progress. 
One of the strangest things in life is the way we 
return to our old ideas. We call them by differ- 
ent names perhaps, and we do not believe in 
them quite so firmly ; but it takes a great deal of 



236 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

re-christening, and modifying to get them finally 
out of existence. I suppose I ought not to tell 
you all this : you will be more likely to resist 
the movement when it begins." 

"Ah!" said Alice, "I couldn't do any thing 
much younger than that." 

Next time it was Celia who spoke first. She 
said, " Alice, what do you mean to say to Harry 
Ashley.?" 

" I do not know," said Alice. " I think I do 
not mean to say any thing." 

"Ah ! that is a decision," said Celia. 

Alice took up the conversation twenty-four 
hours later. 

" I suppose you mean, that Harry will wait no 
longer for me," she said thoughtfully. "Well, 
I can't in reason expect that he should." 

" Harry is a faithful lover," said Celia ; " or 
rather, he will be faithful to you if you allow him. 
If you do not allow him, he will go and be faith- 
ful to some one else." 

Alice rose, and came over to where Celia sat. 
She knelt down, and hid her face in her friend's 
lap. " I can't, Celia," she said incoherently. 
" I know what you wish, and perhaps it is best for 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 237 

me, if any thing is best ; but I can't do it. It is 
too soon : it is inhumanly soon." 

Celia waited until Alice had slipped from kneel- 
ing to sitting on the floor. She kept her hand 
upon the brown head. "What else do you mean 
to do, Alice.?" 

**Ah! that is the question," said Alice. "I 
have no intentions : I never had any. I believe I 
told Mrs. Winters so last summer. I thought it 
a fine, spirited thing to say. I know a few of the 
things I ought to do, however. I ought to con- 
sider Harry as representing an establishment. 
And of course a girl in my position accepts the 
first establishment that kindly opens its doors to 
her." 

"There is no question of your position," said 
Celia quickly, in spite of the requirements of her 
discreet policy. " If you will stay with me " — 

"Ah! but I won't," cried Alice, catching Cel- 
ia's hand, and bringing it down against her cheek. 
" I am not so helpless and contemptible as that. 
No. Just at present I come to you, and I lean on 
you, and I cry at you, and I let you do as you like 
with me, because I feel like a log, all heavy and 
dull, and drifting with the current ; but some day 



238 AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

I shall be a human being again, and then I will 
do something, — I don't know what, but I will not 
throw my weight on you forever." 

Celia lost sight of her politic attitude alto- 
gether. *'Why, Alice, I want you," she said 
impulsively. '' Child, I have always wanted you : 
I wanted to beg you from your father years ago ; 
but then I was afraid, the responsibility was so 
great. But I can take you from fate as a free 
gift." 

Alice shook her head. " No. It is impossible. 
I have some intentions, after all, you see. They 
are all negative. I will not stay with you. Twill 
not go back to Unity. I will not marry Harry 
Ashley. Celia ! I am not quite twenty-one, I am 
strong and healthy, I am cleverer than most girls, 
I am far cleverer than half the stupid boys : is 
there nothing I can do in this world except to 
marry as a refuge '^. Can't I keep a roof over my 
head in any other way .-^ " 

"Yes, you can," said Celia. "It is possible, 
and it is honorable ; but — it is not amusing. You 
would not find it amusing to make dresses or trim 
bonnets, or even to teach children the alphabet or 
scales on the piano. It is one of these things 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 239 

that you would have to do. They tell me that the 
world has advanced, — that there are new occupa- 
tions for women, new interests in life. I do not 
know. This working problem has never touched 
me personally, and I am ashamed to say that I do 
not know. But there is only your case before us 
at present, and I know that you are no better 
fitted to deal with the world than your grand- 
mother was. Perhaps you are not as well fitted. 
It is true that you are clever ; but it is that fatal, 
unguided, diffusive, woman's cleverness. It has 
no channel : it is of far less value than the trained 
stupidity of the boy." 

"You say, 'It is not amusing,'" said Alice. 
" I deserve to have you say that : I have always 
wished to be amused. But is it amusinsf to 
marry, — to have a roof over one's head .-* " 

''Alice, you are not being forced into this 
marriage," said Celia. " If you do not marry, 
and do not go back to your aunt, and if you will 
not stay with me, I will help you to do whatever 
you can. I cannot promise that it shall be what- 
ever you like. Child, do you think I would urge 
you to marry any one, if you could remain as 
you are at this monient t When a girl says st^e 



240 AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

will not marry, she thinks of putting duties and 
cares and responsibilities away from her. She 
thinks of being always young, and of always re- 
sisting her lovers. She never thinks of the day 
when she will no longer be required to resist. I 
do not deny that I wdsh you to marry Harry Ash- 
ley, but I use no unfair means. I speak to you 
with perfect frankness and sincerity. I show you 
all my motives : they will bear the light. I know 
that you will wish to marry at some time. It is 
usual for women to marry, and you will wish to 
do what is usual. This is a common motive with 
women, but it is a passion with you : you always 
desire to be as others are. And you will have 
other motives. There is a strong womanly na- 
ture that some day you will feel. There is a 
weariness, and a dread of loneliness, that will 
make themselves into great terrors. And, if you 
are to marry any one, why not Harry as well as 
another .? Better than another. I tell you it is 
the opportunity of a life-time. I do not pretend 
to overlook the substantial advantages he can 
offer you. They have their just and acknowl- 
edged value. You prize them, and so do I ; but 
I would not force you upon a boor, or upon a 



A A' HONORABLE SURRENDER. 24 1 

vicious man, or a brutal and violent. Harry is a 
gentleman ; he is kind ; as men go, he is good. 
He loves you sincerely. You will find no truer 
gentleman, no kinder heart, no more honest and 
wholesome nature." 

Alice leaned her roughened brown head against 
Celia's knee. Stronger than ever she felt the 
drifting of the current. 

Among the soft forces that urged her on were 
the pleasant images that sprang up in her mind 
whenever she thought of Harry. 

To think of him was to picture something 
always young and gay and friendly ; to see blue 
summer skies, the little breezy grove above the 
river, the sunny kitchen-garden with its green 
wall, and the cool-tinted rooms of Celia's country- 
house. 

She had always craved some actual, tangible 
happiness ; but, in her dark days, the wish took 
on a passionate insistence. 

Formerly, in her unhappy hours, life seemed to 
stretch out before her in an endless gray vista ; 
but now, in her quickened consciousness of ma- 
terial being, when she was miserable, old age and 
death seemed to close in upon her, and she felt 



242 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

a shuddering desire to snatch some happiness, 
some success, some meaning from life, before she 
was hurried into their awful grasp. She reached 
out of her apathy to this desire. 

Might it mean happiness to marry Harry Ash- 
ley } She did not know. 

Meantime February slipped into March. Celia 
was doing all that wise woman and short time 
could do. She never worried Alice ; but she 
forced her softly and steadily, by all that she 
did, by what she said, and what she did not 
say. 

She led her into placid and pliable modes of 
thought. When the first warm days came, she 
sent her out into the open air, and always in 
dainty spring toilets. 

" There is a great regenerating influence in a 
new dress," Alice said one day "There is the 
philosophy of having pretty toilets for church. It 
is easier to be devout under a becoming bonnet." 

Celia looked at her, and forgave the flippancy. 
Her special attribute had been bloom ; and now 
it was coming back to her, — something at once 
ripe and delicate, the freshness of an apple-blos- 
som, the perfection of a peach. 



ajv honorable surrender. 243 

This was one of the prophetic March days. 
Seasonless Broadway seemed almost abloom. 

There were softened outlines, even of cold 
brick and stone, through the warm air; there 
were courageous light dresses ; there were chil- 
dren selling bunches of great, sweet English vio- 
lets, and pansies, gold and amber, purple and 
mauve, — ragged children they were certainly, but 
they no longer shivered, — and there was the 
light-blue, cloud-flecked sky overhead. 

Alice bought a bunch of violets, and fastened 
them in her dress. As she looked up, she met 
the eyes of a gentleman who was regarding her 
not quite in the usual Broadway manner. 

It was all over in a moment. She had blushed, 
nodded, and made a little, indistinct murmur of 
salutation. She was walking up Broadway beside 
Harry Ashley. 

She stole little, observant side-glances at him. 
He was a good deal sunburnt, and his eyes looked 
bluer than ever. 

He had a knot of violets in his buttonhole. 
He had the old prosperous, sunshiny atmosphere 
about him. 

There never was a less formidable companion. 



244 ^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Harry's behavior was most cheerful, common- 
place and re-assuring. 

Apparently he had enjoyed crossing the Atlan- 
tic in the stormy season. He had enjoyed the 
society of the English ladies, though Alice fan- 
cied them of the heavy and stolid type. He was 
incorrigible : he enjoyed every thing in life. 

In this mood he continued until they reached 
the very door of Celia's house. 

And then, — why was he in such a hurry } 
Why couldn't he wait .'' It was flattering, but 
highly inconvenient. 

He said, ** Shall I come in } " 

Alice looked down at the door-mat, — a most 
prosaic object. 

The door-knob turned within. 

Alice said a single word : ''Yes.'* 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 245 



XV. 



" She was possessed by a spirit of general disappointment. It 
was not simply that she had a distaste for what she was called on 
to do : the distaste spread itself over the world outside." 

George Eliot. 

In her youth, Celia Crosby had had a distinct 
girl's ideal of herself, and the life she meant to 
lead ; and, being a woman with a sense of irony, 
as she grew older she was often made to smile, in 
a delicate, satirical way, at the un-ideal situations 
in which she found herself. 

Her smile was never more delicate nor more 
ironical than when she came to play the part of 
interposing Providence in the fortunes of two 
quarrelling lovers. 

''Ah! but I don't quarrel, you see," objected 
Harry. 

Of this pair, it was Harry who stood closest to 
her, who heard her admirable counsels, and felt 
her personal force. 



246 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

**You don't mean to say that Alice quarrels?" 
said Celia, bluntly for her. 

"Oh, no!" said Harry absently. Presently he 
waked up to the enormity of the idea. 

"■ Miss Dinsmore does not quarrel," he said 
punctiliously, and with one of his clear, direct 
looks. " Of course not. But there is something 
in the air." He looked down, and pulled his 
mustache. " There is something very uncom- 
fortable in the air." And, to tell the truth, there 
was. 

In the beginning, it was the very natural 
change that came over Alice's thoughts of Harry 
when she came to regard him as her accepted 
lover. It was a great change that he had left 
the vantage-ground of being an injured man. 

It had never been easy to pity him. He was 
too stalwart and fair and broad-shouldered, physi- 
cally, just as he was mentally too sturdy and 
cheery and firmly balanced. Yet it could not be 
denied, that, in a certain sense, she had injured 
him ; and though she was not a cruel woman, 
nor a foolishly vain, in spite of the frank trib- 
ute she paid her own charms ; and though she 
would have been the first to say prettily, and it 



A.V HONORABLE SURRENDER. 247 

may be with sincerity, that the man who failed to 
win her missed of Httle worth the winning, — this 
idea had for her a subtle, potent charm. Yes, 
she had not been able to resist the egotism of 
pitying Harry, and she had not been hard or cool 
or subtle enough to evade the fascination of her 
own pity. 

The sober light of day is trying to any person- 
ality after a glamour like this. 

*' I am extremely glad Harry is happy," she 
said, in the early days of her engagement ; " but 
he need not walk about this world like a dancing- 
bear." This was a shallow sarcasm, and it had 
the exasperating grain of truth that shallow sar- 
casms usually possess. 

The very worst that could be said of Harry 
was, that happiness had made him a trifle clumsy. 
He certainly carried his head a little higher than 
usual : his air of good fortune was a trifle more 
noticeable, and he had a boyish disposition to over- 
load his betrothed with presents and attentions. 

There was not one grain of ostentation in his 
nature. There was no taint of vulgarity in his 
natural and lovable wish to make some practical 
expression of his happiness, and his fondness for 



248 AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

her, and to begin to make her hfe bright and 
smooth, and exceptional in dehghts. Ahce ac- 
knowledged that there was not, but she could 
not help feeling oppressed. 

There was, so to speak, too much substantial 
splendor about her, too many roses, too much 
authorized and inevitable devotion. 

She saw with wonder how life seemed to stretch 
before Harry as a holiday stretches before a child, 
not because he had visionary and impossible views 
of happiness, but because he had a practical and 
realizing sense of his own advantages, of his 
youth, and even, in a limited degree, of his sunny, 
fortunate nature. 

His views of life were chiefly plans for spend- 
insf his holidav. He meant to travel : he was 
sure Alice would like to travel. 

Harry had a suspicion that he had not travelled, 
even though he had seen Europe in the rapid 
American manner. 

There was certainly some other way of going 
about the world, some other way of seeing sights 
and places. Alice probably knew the other way. 
He meant to take her to Italy. She would like 
Paris, of course ; every one liked Paris : but there 



AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 249 

would be something exceptional in her liking for 
Rome. True, many people liked Rome ; but in 
Alice's liking would be something distinctive. 

He would have liked to induce her to talk a 
little about these things, but she was not in- 
clined. 

She said she would like to go to Rome ; and 
then she said she would like to go to Chicago, 
when he asked her immediately afterward. And 
he saw the incongruity, and she did not. 

There were other things Harry wished to talk 
about. One of them was the unfortunate mediae- 
val Rock, — not that Harry called it the Rock in 
speaking of it. He made no particular pretence 
to culture, but he had an idea that Alice would 
prefer a country-house of greater architectural 
sincerity. " Architectural sincerity " was not the 
term he used, however. 

This subject of conversation was also a failure. 

" She seems to think it in bad taste to talk 
much about houses, and ways of living. She 
won't talk about any thing of the kind. It seems 
to give her an idea of a flashy, middle-class, new- 
people sort of style, that she doesn't like. That 
is, if I catch her idea : I'm not sure that I 



250 AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER, 

do. People talk a good deal about houses and 
furniture, though. They call it Household Art." 
(Something in Harry's accent expressed the capi- 
tals perfectly.) '' I don't call it Household Art, 
but I can't see how that alters the matter. I want 
to find out what she likes. I don't see how I am 
to get at it unless she tells me." 

Harry was a trifle more garrulous than usual 
in those days. His perplexity seemed to have 
loosened his tongue. 

And then he had a new expression, — two 
unfamiliar wrinkles across his forehead, and a 
shadow that actually seemed to cloud the color of 
his pleasant eyes. 

Whenever he looked like this, Celia felt dis- 
proportionately distressed. It appalled her to 
think that this might foreshadow his marital ex- 
pression. Her feeling about Harry was probably 
a little exaggerated and morbid. He seemed to 
stand so close to her. She fell into the habit of 
saying '' My boy," when she spoke of him to 
herself. 

A chord was ajar somewhere in her being, — a 
chord that is tremulously sensitive in a childless 
woman of Celia's age and nature. He stood so 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2$ I 

close that his figure seemed to hide Alice from 
her view. 

Alice also was a good deal perplexed. One of 
the first causes of her perplexity was a whimsical, 
trivial sort of wonder that took possession of her, 
— a wonder at the strangeness of her position. 

It seemed so strange that she had promised to 
marry Harry Ashley ! It was suddenly so strange 
that she could promise to marry any man ! 

A half-forgotten phase of her girlhood rose 
before her, — that period of imaginary revolt 
known to a high-spirited girl in the sharpness of 
her first insights. Alice had had insights into 
so many things, from her girl's standpoint, and 
the sense of aloofness that it gave, — into life, 
before its serious concerns had lost their imper- 
sonal air ; into the destinies of women ; into 
marriage. 

Alice had thought very highly of these in- 
sights. In a certain sense, she thought highly 
of them still. They might be a little crude and 
narrow, — her keenness had the usual tendency to 
shoot into rays ; but they were precocious, they 
were clever, they had the sharpness of truth. 

Their one fault was, that they had no practical 



252 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

use. She felt this with a sense of strangeness 
which was not as yet a sense of pain. She was 
like one travelling to the West, provided with 
accurate maps and guide-books — for a journey 
in the opposite direction. 

One by one her judgments and opinions came 
and looked at her, — opinions on life, on the 
destinies of women, on marriage. 

Something she had said of married women 
recurred to her with especial clearness, — '' They 
are happy in a way I should not care for, and 
they are unhappy in a way I should find intoler- 
able." 

She could summon sufficient hopeful egotism 
to imagine herself among the happy, but how if 
the happiness proved of a burdensome sort t 

She pictured the unattractive figure of a woman 
grown heavy and commonplace, both mentally 
and physically, under the burden of matronly, 
domestic bliss ; and she shrugged her straight, 
shapely shoulders at this homely future-self, just 
as she shrugged them at a corresponding picture 
she had formed of Harry, — poor Harry ! quite 
unconscious in his youth and his bonny good 
looks. She imagined him grown ten years older, 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 253 

and developing a strong resemblance to his father. 
To be sure, she had never known the elder Ash- 
ley ; but she was illogically certain of objecting 
to the resemblance. 

One day she had a new sort of prophetic vision 
suggested by a visitor of Celia's. 

This lady was handsome, animated in manner, 
and fashionable in dress ; but she had one or two 
peculiarities which were not admirable. Her 
youthful costume, exquisite in itself, required her 
to sit with her back to the light in order to pre- 
serve the harmony of her appearance ; and, when 
she wished to emphasize a phrase, she made an 
ascending scale of her sentence, and concluded with 
a little shriek on the highest note she could reach. 

Celia said she had had a late success in life, 
and it had made her a little vulgar. 

Alice wondered if early success ever had a 
like deplorable effect. Was it a choice between 
this and the prosaic matron } Was this the con- 
sequence of a taste for luxury, and a passion for 
society, and, above all, for social success .'* 

When Alice wished her life to resemble the 
lives of others, she thought always of lives the 
most successful, admirable, and complete. 



254 A^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

She desired of the earth, not the rude odor of 
the soil, but the delicate, conventional perfume of 
violets. 

These were wishes ; but the very phrase, "like 
the lives of others," proved her lack of the robust 
confidence necessary to imagine herself a fortunate 
exception. It was easy to depress her with the idea 
that her life would be dreary or wearisome or com- 
monplace, just as it was easy to convince her of 
many of her faults and absurdities. Her imagi- 
nation filled in outlines with surprising rapidity. 

It was her whim to see in Celia's unconscious 
acquaintance another future-self at the climax of 
her career. She made a little pen-and-ink sketch 
of the vivacious lady's figure, to which she added 
her own face grown older ; and she regarded it 
with quaint serio-comic terror which was not with- 
out a grain of genuine seriousness. 

One day she showed the sketch to Harry. If 
she had expected him to laugh, she was disap- 
pointed, though Harry usually chose to see the 
element of comedy uppermost ; not because his 
sense of humor was so overpoweringly strong, but 
because he feared the absurdity of being serious 
in the wrong place. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 255 

But he did not laugh at the sketch. 

" That is what I shall look like when I am forty 
years old," said Alice. 

"Well, I hope not," said Harry bluntly. "I 
don't see why you should, I'm sure. I should 
like " — 

**Yes, yes, what would you like.?" said Alice 
impatiently. Sometimes it was an imperative 
question this, what Harry would like. 

Harry looked down at the slip of paper. '* That 
is just what I want you to tell me." 

Somehow the tall, broad-shouldered fellow 
looked oddly helpless to Alice, — helpless be- 
tween the little pen-and-ink woman and herself. 
It rushed over her with a sense of generous 
shame and remorse, that she was imbittering for 
him the sweetest, the most ideal, relation in life. 

She laid one hand on his light-brown head. 
"■ It is a pity you are so fond of me," she said 
irrelevantly. 

Harry made an uneasy movement. "It is a 
pity you see it in that light." 

He found an excuse, and left her rather abruptly 
after that. He wanted to get into the open air. 

His kind, sunny temper was subject to sudden 



256 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

brief, sharp gusts ; and, for once, he felt danger- 
ously near saying something rough to Alice. 

He came back next day in a different mood. 

"I haven't much to say about principles, and 
that sort of thing," he said, leaning against the 
chimney-piece. " They are heavy to carry about ; 
but, for all that, I don't intend to behave shab- 
bily, if I am aware of it. It has struck me — it 
has struck me a good many times lately, that I 
might be behaving shabbily to you. If I am, 
I wish to know it. I always think one of the 
most contemptible things a man can do is to 
worry " — Harry stopped abruptly — " to worry a 
girl into a promise. If I have done that, I wish 
to know it. And if I could make you happier — 
by keeping out of your way altogether " — 

Alice looked at him with a kind of fascinated 
terror. She had never for a moment contem- 
plated breaking her engagement. 

This marriage might be unwelcome, but what 
else was left for her .'* Celia's words had bitten 
sharply into any vague ideas of singleness and 
independence. If she were not a dependant on 
charity, she must trim bonnets, or make dresses, 
or teach little girls. It would not be amusing. 



ajv honorable surrender. 257 

She would be lonely and weary. She would grow 
old and unattractive. When it was too late she 
would wish to marry ; '' because it was usual for 
women to marry, and she would wish to do what 
was usual." 

Her imagination rapidly sketched the details. 
She felt sinking, sinking in an unexpected void. 

She slipped her heavy, brilliant ring into her 
right palm. "Perhaps this is better," she said, 
in a faint, proud tone. " We will assume that it 
is." She held the ring toward Harry. He closed 
her hand over it. 

** We won't assume that," he said sturdily. 
" We'll never assume that, unless it is so sure it 
can't be helped. I did not mean that — that I'm 
not the luckiest fellow in the world, to win you 
on any terms at all." Alice looked up at his 
flushed, eager face, — his kind young face ! 

The end of it all was, that he put the ring back 
again. 

She was rather gratefully submissive. This 
world might be more or less uncomfortable, but 
she had no desire for chaos and the deluge. 

When Harry came out into the hall, he stood 
a moment by the stairs, and looked up with a 



258 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

thoughtful expression. It was quite permissible 
for him to go up-stairs, and knock at the door of 
Mrs. Crosby's sitting-room ; but this he was reluc- 
tant to do. 

As if in answer to his wish, a door opened 
above ; and Celia herself came out, and began to 
descend the stairs. 

He began to talk about indifferent matters. 
" Why did not Mrs. Crosby have a white owl for 
the library } All the ladies had white owls. He 
could get a fine one for her, or rather Gleatzner 
could get one. Gleatzner was an old German, a 
queer fellow. He had a little hole of a place, 
in an out-of-the-way street down town. Mrs. 
Crosby should see the jolace. Birds alive and 
dead, aquariums — was that what you called them.? 
And" — 

By this time they had reached the end of the 
hall opposite the little reception-room on the 
right. A light chair stood across its thresh- 
old. 

Harry sat down abruptly, and dropped his head 
into his hands. *' Mrs. Crosby, I wish you would 
find out what is the matter. I can't stand this 
any longer." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 259 

By the time Celia came in to her, Alice had 
made an unexpected resolve. 

" I am going back to Unity," she said abruptly. 
" Not to stay, — oh, no ! I wish to take a little 
journey, — a little pleasure-trip in the spring 
weather." 

''There is no worse place for you," said Celia. 
"But of course you will do as you like." 

Alice looked at her with rising excitement. 
*' Yes, for once as I like. You have always ruled 
me by telling me I should have my way : now I 
mean to have it in spite of your permission." 



260 AM HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



XVI. 

" Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even 
home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in 
clay." — Emerson. 

Alice had her way to the extent of going back 
to Unity, — she did not stop to think how strange 
it was that she should desire to go back, — but, if 
she had intended to appear in the light of doing 
something remarkable, she was not allowed to ful- 
fil this portion of her intent. 

Celia assumed that it was very natural that she 
should visit her aunt. It was a tribute both to 
affection and convention, on the eve of her mar- 
riage : it was very amiable and very proper. 

And, if Harry did not fully share this view, he 
was persuaded to seem to share it ; which was as 
good, or as bad, for Alice. 

So she went away in a misty, gray morning, 
with a feeling of shamed regret at last. It was a 
little too much like going back into exile : the 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 26 1 

glory of her independence had taken to itself 
wings. 

She shook hands with Celia on the platform, 
and with Harry in the crimson-velvet interior of 
the car. Celia looked collected and friendly, — 
Alice would have said noticeably so, only '* notice- 
able " was a violent word to apply to Celia, — and 
Harry had something of his old air of cordial 
good cheer. 

Alice wondered whether he had assumed it for 
the occasion, as he brought her the tea-roses, and 
the light, newly published novel ; or whether he 
thus ingenuously acknowledged that her little 
absence promised to be a comfortable arrange- 
ment for all. " In five years he will be extremely 
glad to have me take little journeys," she thought. 
** My poor Harry ! " This idea entangled itself 
with her recollection of his frank, genial face and 
his blue eyes. 

The gray, soft sky overhead seemed to settle 
heavily after noon ; and, when she left the express 
at Westfield Junction, a fine, dense rain was 
falling. At dusk, when she stepped out on the 
narrow platform of Unity Station, the rain had 
become violent, and a wind had risen that howled 



262 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

around the flimsy little building in gusts like 
November. 

For the first bewildered instant she stood still, 
hearing the train go puffing and hissing up the 
grade ; feeling that wind and rain were beating 
upon her, that her heavy skirts were wrapped 
tightly around her ankles, and her wet veil drawn 
across her face. 

Before she could clear the veil away from her 
eyes, some one was addressing her as " Miss 
Dinsmore." 

When she could see, she looked at the substan- 
tial, ungainly person of Mr. Luther Jones. 

Mr. Jones was one of Miss Fairfield's neigh- 
bors, and he had come to drive Miss Dinsmore 
down to the farm. He said " Miss Fairfield 
wanted he should." The New-England fellow- 
citizen is not sent upon any occasion : his services 
are "wanted," and therefore he goes. 

Alice objected to Mr. Jones. It was probably 
not his fault that his hair and complexion were of 
the color of brick-dust, nor that he was christened 
Luther and nicknamed "Lute;" but Alice consid- 
ered the circumstances unpleasant. 

On this occasion, however, she was very glad 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 263 

to see him, and to reach the shelter of his covered 
buggy. She addressed customary inquiries and 
civiHties to the back of his head, as he leaned 
well forward to drive a sober animal called " the 
colt." 

She saw how square and white the houses 
looked, as they drove through the village. The 
thin, young foliage of shrubs and trees was 
almost invisible in the wet, gray twilight. 

Well, the barrenness and the primness of the 
village, and the crudeness of the late spring, were 
so many local influences ; even Mr. Jones was a 
local influence, which was certainly a point in his 
favor. She came for local influences, if she came 
for any reason at all. 

Night was beginning to close in when they 
stopped at the gate of " Fairfields." 

Mr. Jones lifted her down with awkward care- 
fulness ; but the edge of her skirts detached some 
mud from the wheel, and two little cold, sticky 
rills trickled inside the trim tops of her boots. 

She ran up the gravel-path, and knocked at the 
front-door. The storm swept her against its 
white, streaked surface. She remembered oddly 
how hot it had looked last July, and how malig- 



264 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

nantly the great glass door-knob had glistened in 
the sun. 

She knocked on the panel again with her slim, 
gloved hands. No one heard. 

Still again, and yet no answer. Her knuckles 
tingled under the kid. 

She sprang down from the step, and ran around 
the corner of the house. The soles of her 
shoes were drenched in an instant : the short 
grass held an incredible amount of water. The 
meadow-wind met her, and well-nigh drove her 
back. 

At last she was at the kitchen-door, her hand 
was on the latch ; it resisted, clicked : the door 
flew open. 

She sprang in ; and with her came a wild gust 
of wind and rain, a handful of torn petals from 
the nearest cherry-tree, a dash of mud from her 
dress and cloak. 

Miss Eunice started up from before the oven- 
door. " Sakes alive ! you've brought in the river- 
meadows ! " 

Alice burst out laughing. Wet and cold and 
tired though she was, the drollness of her aunt's 
reception was stronger than any thing else. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 265 

And Miss Eunice was really glad to see her 
niece, in spite of the unpromising character of her 
welcome. Alice knew that, as well as she knew 
why the unseasonable fire was lighted in the 
sitting-room, why there was peach-jam on the tea- 
table, and why Miss Eunice went before her with 
a lamp into the neat, bare room up-stairs. She 
was touched by the little concessions to her fancy, 
and grateful for the homely services, as she could 
not have been grateful a year before. She had a 
new sense of the sweetness of the common kind- 
nesses of life. 

When Miss Eunice left her, she shut the door 
with a sense of refuge ; a sense certainly not of 
happiness, nor of peace, — for her perplexities had 
as much force as ever, — but of a security, if only 
for the moment, that was very sweet. 

A peace penetrates, where a refuge simply 
infolds. 

Alice slept very soundly under her security and 
her bodily fatigue. She fell asleep to the sound 
of the rain upon the roof. 

When she woke next morning, the storm had 
ceased. She went to the window, and looked up 
into a gray sky of infinite depth and softness, not 



266 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

bright enough to dazzle, not dark enough to have 
the color of gloom. 

Below, the orchard was all wet and blooming. 
The cherry boughs were white under the window, 
and farther off the apple-trees were flushed and 
dappled with pink. Alice looked down through 
the drenched blossoms at the drowned grass. 

She dressed hastily, and ran down-stairs, through 
the kitchen, out into the orchard. 

She gathered up her skirts, and stepped daintily 
over the wet turf, trying at each step to grasp the 
sense of spring : it had eluded her while she sat 
occupied with her own concerns. 

The season had passed before her like a pa- 
geant, with its fresh wind and sunlight, its new 
life and color ; and she had looked on with half- 
shut, careless eyes. 

Now she tried to see what she had missed in 
the rosy boughs of the apple-trees, in the solid 
white of the pears covered with compact, snowy 
clusters, and the broken white of the cherries, 
whose bloomy twigs were thick-set with young 
leaves. 

She fastened some half-blown sprays in her 
belt, and went into the house. Miss Eunice 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 26/ 

looked at them dryly, and scolded Alice for going 
out into the wet orchard, not to mention bringing 
mud in upon the clean kitchen-floor. 

Alice did not mind what she said. At least it 
had a familiar sound : probably it was a local in- 
fluence. It slipped into her sense of security of 
the night before. 

This was a Sunday morning. It was White 
Sunday, Miss Eunice said, as she stood in the 
doorway dressed for church. 

"What is White Sunday.'*" asked Alice, who 
was not dressed for church. 

" It is the Sunday when the fruit-trees are all 
blossomed out," said Miss Eunice. She added 
half-absently, *' It comes when it's sent." And 
then she went down the straight gravel-path. 

Alice sat down upon the door-step, and thought 
of this saying of hers. It was rather fine. " It 
comes when it's sent." '' Sent," in the signifi- 
cance of the Puritanic mind and faith, — that 
austere faith, exact, personal, and exacting. 

By very force of contrast, her mind went back 
to that religion whose impressive manifestations 
were associated with a certain period of her child- 
hood. Between that imperial church, gorgeous 



268 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

alike to adherents and aliens, inscrutably complex 
in its scheme, studiously simple in its require- 
ments, and this belief of New England, Alice 
had passed untouched by either. 

To the latter she was scarcely accessible. It 
was too stern, too narrow and colorless : it of- 
fered no allurements. Faith is a creature of 
wings, and Alice's only winged thoughts lay in 
that impressible portion of her nature which im- 
peratively required to be allured. 

There were means and expressions of that other 
faith, that might have moved her with incalcula- 
ble force, — a Gloria breaking out of silence; a 
marvel of color between inner dimness and the 
light of heaven, a ruby saint, a golden glory, a 
Christ risen in the suffering majesty of a violet 
mantle ; a gray cathedral aisle ; a dark, convent- 
ual figure in the half-light between two worlds. 
None of these potent influences reached her, and 
she was not made to feel the capabilities and dan- 
gers of the phase through which she was passing. 

Insufficient as her experiences may seem, — and 
it was now possible for her to acknowledge them 
essentially small, even while she felt their effect 
as great, — she was trembling on the verge of that 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 269 

state of frenzied exaltation and excitement, which, 
though a result of human passion and suffering, 
is often mistaken by women for a spiritual ecstasy 
and devotion. 

While she sat on the door-step the sky gradu- 
ally cleared, with no ostentatious sweeping-away 
of clouds, but with a brightening from gray 
through grayish-white into whitish-blue. At last 
the sun came out fully. The day had grown very 
warm. 

Alice went into the sitting-room. The windows 
were open, but the light came in cool and sobered 
between the green slats of the blinds. The fire- 
place was closed, and the hearth swept clean. 

She sat down in the chintz-covered rocking- 
chair ; and looked at the four square walls, at the 
geometrical group of portraits, at the braided 
mats on the floor. 

The room was everywhere plain, clean and 
square ; but for her there was everywhere the 
same sweet sense of refuge. 

A limited and moderate pleasure this, but sweet 
— sweet and dry, like the scent of withered rose- 
leaves. It would not last, and Alice knew that it 
would not ; no more than the spring-day would 



2/0 AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

last, or the apple-blossoms, or Miss Eunice's soli- 
tary flash of poetry about White Sunday. She 
knew that the old loneliness and dreariness would 
return, and the sense of security would be as 
behind iron bars. 

Very well : in the mean time this other sense 
was pleasant. 

After noon she went into the orchard again, 
and, for the first time, went over to the meadow 
wall. 

The grass was still wet, but the flat, rough 
stones on top of the wall were hot in the sun. 
Some apple-blossoms and scattered petals had 
drifted down and withered upon them. 

Alice leaned against the young tree from which 
they fell, and others drifted down upon her head. 

A sickening pang seized her as she thought of 
the summer of a year ago. 

It was not regret, not shame — that common 
shame — at having given her experience a larger 
name than it deserved, calling what was false 
real ; but rather shame that what was real had 
shaken her so slightly, that so hot a fire had 
already fallen into ashes. 

Was this what became of all things, — alike of 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2/1 

love and hate, of passion and indifference, of hap- 
piness and unhappiness ? 

It had been easy to say "All is vanity," of the 
phases of her nature, as it is trite to say, "We 
must all die ; " but when she saw sinking out of 
her life, a desire, a joy, a pang, that yesterday 
had life and heat and compelling force, the 
phrase came home to her with some reflex of the 
significance of that other phrase, as it comes to 
those for whom it has the awfulness of a personal 
meaning. 

She felt a despair of life and of herself; her 
desires, her struggles, her attainments ; an impo- 
tent rebellion at being carried with the great tide 
that passes, — passes. 

" I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's 
shuttle ! ' Those metaphors solace me not, nor 
sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I 
care not to be carried with the tide that smoothly 
bears human life to eternity." 

Her insistent consciousness of material life 
had passed into that other consciousness of living, 
which is not material, but which yet so moves the 
senses that it scarce escapes the term of sensation. 

She overlooked a strong reason for the rapidity 



2/2 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

and completeness of the changes that had taken 
place in her. 

It was that the present was full of perplexities, 
which, having their life in that of the moment, of 
necessity loomed large before her, shutting out 
the things of a year ago. A hand before the eyes 
shuts out the whole horizon-line. 

But the question the weightiest and the most 
urgent, that came to her oftenest and staid long- 
est and most persistently, was, What would 
Harry require of her .'* 

It was easy to say that he would require only 
herself, but what manner of self could she offer 
him t A discontented woman, unhappy and 
therefore unpleasant ? — a disillusioned nature, 
which he would like none the better for an imper- 
fect comprehension of the term. 

True, Harry was not accessible to sentimental 
wrongs ; but there were practical wrongs to which 
he was extremely accessible, — to a peevish tem- 
per that would jar upon his own wholesome one, 
to an indifference that would damp his pleasures, 
to a sullenness that would darken his home and 
his table, to a caprice that would offend and scat- 
ter his friends. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2/3 

Alice began to have an agonizing fear that she 
should make him miserable. 

This was a step forward, — from the fear of un- 
happiness for herself to the fear of unhappiness 
for another. 

And there was no personal element in her fear, 
as there had been in that old fear of Lawrence's 
sacrifice, of Lawrence's patience that she could 
not trust. 

She did not fear that Harry would revenge 
upon her whatever he missed or endured, even 
through her faults. 

If there were harsh or ungenerous or bitter 
traits in his nature, she never saw nor suspected 
them. No images of darkness connected them- 
selves with his name. 

She thought of him as kind, cheery, and gen- 
tle ; she thought of his likable air of confidence, 
and brisk delight in life. 

There was something generous in her admira- 
tion of him, — this gay, generous lover, wham she 
did not love. 

And yet, after all, there was a grain of personal 
feeling in her fear of making him unhappy. 

It was the fear of a penalty. It was a fear that 



274 ^^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

she had seen in her mother, under the stern name 
of retribution. 

Poor Ruth had felt the very terrors of the law 
launched at her head. The unhappiness of her 
married life was to her the penalty of disobedi- 
ence ; and for every act of hers that erred against 
the severe code in which she had been reared, she 
feared a direct and literal punishment. And this 
her mind, morbidly alert, never failed to discover 
in the many trials of her life. 

As children share a serious belief, Alice had 
shared this. She could remember when she had 
trembled at the thought of certain small, childish 
sins, and had wondered whether she would die of 
a fever like one of her playmates, or — and this 
was worse — whether she would fall on the hot 
stove, and scar her face. 

Some shadowy menace of the idea lingered 
illogically in her fancy, long after it had been 
actively expelled from her reason. She thought 
she had lost it long ago, but in reality it had never 
wholly left her. Lately it had re-appeared in a 
new form. 

It was a form to which she could not give a 
name, — she who had been so fluent in neat, de- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2/5 

scriptive terms for the processes of her own 
mind. 

It was a vague realization that the penalties of 
the faults and shortcomings of moral nature 
might be like those attached to the breaking of 
great physical laws — involved of necessity in the 
nature of the offence, not dealt upon the offender 
by some outer power. 

It is an old, old thought, but it was new enough 
to Alice. It was like a door opened into some 
unknown darkness, where she groped and stum- 
bled for an outlet to the day. 

Such ideas as that the penalty of falseness 
of tongue might be simply perverted vision ; of 
treachery of act, the inability to be true ; of self- 
ishness and cruelty, the crushing of the most 
pure and permanent delights, both of introspec- 
tion, and of the sweet contact of what is best in 
one's own nature with what is best in others, — 
such thoughts as these came to her with the force 
of new discoveries, she who had been so wise. 

It was thus that she came to think with terror 
of how it would fare with her if she were to make 
Harry unhappy ; how if she were to fail in those 
duties and responsibilitie;s which she was soon to 



2/6 A A' HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

assume, — duties and responsibilities which were 
of necessity, and still more by the natural reti- 
cence of her imagination, signs of unknown quan- 
tities, which might represent demands upon her 
forces impossible to fulfil. 

It was thus that she came to wonder, with 
strange acknowledgment of her own helpless 
ignorance, whether there might not be something 
better than what she had so valued and desired, 
— admiration, social power, a success that other 
women would recognize, a life like the lives of the 
most brilliant and prosperous. 

These things seemed to fall into insignificance 
in her exalted mood : she did not trust it, and she 
was not sure that it was exalted ; but, when she 
thought of what she had desired, it seemed to her 
that there might be something better, more perma- 
nent, sweeter in the dull gray evening of one's life. 

And yet this thought was light to the weight 
of what she must endure if she broke away from 
her promise to Harry, — the risk of growing old 
in solitude and dreariness, of making no success, 
of not doing what was usual for women ; the pros- 
pect of teaching children, or trimming bonnets ; 
the certainty of not being amused. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2yj 

These thoughts made a circle in which she 
walked day after day. There was no rest, and it 
seemed to her there was no progress : always the 
same thoughts, — the fear of making Harry un- 
happy, the fear of penalties in and of her own 
nature ; the thought that there might be some- 
thing better than the things she had desired ; the 
thought that she could not risk real loss or hard- 
ship for this new, faint light, which was neither 
conviction nor hope. 

The same thoughts day after day. 

There came to her no electric instants in which 
truth and resolve flashed in upon her mind : no 
outer influences swayed the balance to either 
side. 

One of the hardest things that came to her 
was to tell Miss Eunice the story of the winter's 
changes. 

Miss Eunice heard it very quietly ; the few 
comments that she made were gentle and dry and 
flavorless — except one. 

She said that girls often did not think seriously 
when they promised. It would be better if they 
did. " But," she added quaintly, " I shouldn't 
want them to be real serious ; at least, not all the 



278 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

time," — which placed Miss Eunice in an unex- 
pected light. 

But in spite of this, Alice could not help think- 
ing that her aunt's attitude was in reality that of 
the virtuous relative who sees the ne'er-do-well 
of the family come to grief in earnest at last. 
And she acknowledged with humility, and with- 
out bitterness, that there was a great deal of truth 
in Miss Eunice's view. 

And her thoughts went on in the same old 
channel, — the fear of making Harry unhappy, 
the fear of these new penalties, the thought of 
that new light, the acknowledgment of her own 
helpless cowardice. 

She had been in Unity a long time now. The 
cherry boughs looked red at the core, when the 
wind rushed through them and showed the fruit ; 
and the young apples showed on the tree from 
the sitting-room windows. 

There must be an end to it at last. 

She went out to the meadow-wall one evening, 
went over to the farther corner where it was 
breast-high, and stood leaning against it. The 
rough stones were damp, and the darkness felt 
damp with the river-mists. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2/9 

She was falling back into an old, sentimental 
creed that she had heard, and despised, from 
other women, that in the great affairs of life love 
is best ; if with it is not all other good, without 
it is none, — falling back into an old, womanly 
pride, that revolts at the reasonings of expedi- 
ency. 

There was a sense of sweetness in pausing 
upon these old thoughts. There was not much 
good in her, perhaps ; but at least her nature was 
pure enough for a definite passion, proud enough 
to revolt from a mercenary marriage, faithful 
enough to its best to turn at last to this old, 
sweet creed rejected until now. 

But she did not rest there. 

She began to feel that her judgments of life 
had been the biased judgments of an ever-con- 
scious personality, that her view of life had been 
the view of one who sees his own figure always 
in the foreground. 

Slowly and with pain she began to see herself 
as indeed one among others ; as if that principle 
we call a soul could stand apart, and see its 
poor companion and dwelling-place jostled in a 
crowd. 



280 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

A slow progress this, a creeping and stumbling, 
but surely toward the light. 

Some ideas came to her in the black and white 
garb of absolute right and absolute wrong. 

It was wrong, absolutely, to assume trusts for 
which she had neither ignorant confidence nor 
intelligent strength ; wrong to risk, through any 
fault or failure of hers, injury to another nature, 
above all, a sweet and sound and generous one. 

It was right to turn aside, at any cost, from 
this risk to another, this degradation to herself. 

In the chill, thick darkness by the meadow-wall, 
she knew what she would do. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 28 1 



XVII. 

" In broad daylight, and at noon, 
Yesterday I saw the moon 
Sailing high, but faint and white, 
As a schoolboy's paper kite." 

Longfellow. 

But next morning it was harder. 

In her first waking moments, she looked out 
into the blue, blue sky, and at those green tops 
of trees that rose in the wind and dipped again 
from sight. 

A part of what she had resolved was renuncia- 
tion ; but a greater part was action, and action 
was hard. And there was something harder in 
the change that had come over her thoughts of 
the evening before. 

It rushed over her in the moment of her first 
reluctant, half-conscious remembrance. 

It was not a change in any of her purposes, 
but in the point of view from which she regarded 
them. She was still decided not to marry Harry 



282 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 

Ashley ; to go first to Celia, and tell her hard 
story, and to free herself as honorably as she 
might : but where was the visionary height of 
achievement that she had constructed from the 
making of such resolves as these ? 

To break her word ; to wound these two, her 
truest and most generous friends ! 

She recognized the sense of despondency that 
rushed over her with additional dismay. 

It was the sick and sorry feeling that comes 
with the morning after an escapade. Her esca- 
pades had been girlish affairs, chiefly sins against 
her own standard of good taste ; but she knew 
the feeling, and behold ! it seized upon her in this 
exaggerated form after her one hard, faithful 
effort to gain the heights. 

Her struggles had been as hard as heroism ; 
and in these few hours the light had faded out of 
her resolves, and they showed white and thin 
and tawdry in the day, fallen from their alti- 
tude, but unchanged in their demands upon her 
strength. 

If she rould but lie there, and look into the 
blue, and r^st, and let the world go by ! 

There was nothing very heroic to be done at 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 283 

present ; but it was something instead of heroism 
to rise, and dash the cold water over her face, and 
to brush and coil her hair, and dress as quickly as 
possible. 

It represented a certain amount of resolution 
to close the door of her room, and go down the 
narrow stairs. 

Afterwards, whenever she recalled that day, it 
stood out among her thoughts as the most pain- 
ful, the most consistently trying, time of her life. 

It was hard from the moment when she had to 
explain to Miss Eunice why she came down in 
her travelling-dress, to the moment when she 
stepped out into the crowd and confusion of the 
great, noisy station at her journey's end. 

The feeling that she had of being under a hard, 
tense, nervous strain was bad in itself, and worse 
in that it blunted no minor evils, but rather in- 
tensified them. 

She was conscious that there was something a 
little violent and overstrained in what she was 
doing, just as her senses were conscious of heat 
and dust and noise. 

There was a touch of the mock-heroic in taking 
a bad matter at its worst. Why could she not 



284 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

have written to Harry and Celia, instead of hurry- 
ing into the great, hot city, to awkward and pain- 
ful scenes which might have been avoided, and to 
do what was hard enough in itself, in the hardest 
way for all concerned ? 

Her perceptions were morbidly alert for the 
side-lights that had always teased and dazzled 
her : she was losing her large, clear thoughts, in 
petty fears that she should do what was ridiculous 
or violent or in false taste. 

When she left the train, and came out into the 
street, she was trembling with excitement and 
fatigue and her old despondency, and with a nerv- 
ous terror at being alone in the crowd and find- 
ing a cab for herself. 

There was no one to meet her : not Celia nor 
Harry ; nor Cornelius with his odd welcome of 
her, his eager looks at her changed beauty, and 
his talk of old inhabitants and the streets of New 
York. 

Poor, false, pretentious, brilliant father ! she 
leaned back in her cab when she found it, and 
cried even for him. 

If she had shown some hardness in leaving 
him, he was avenged now. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 285 

The sun was still shining hotly, when she dis- 
missed her cab, and ran up the steps of Celia's 
house. The servant who admitted her was a 
stranger ; and she was told that Mrs. Crosby was 
out, and shown into the larger parlor to wait her 
return. 

It was a handsome room ; but its substantial 
luxuries belonged to the past season, and began to 
look oppressive. Alice did not know how long 
she waited there : it was an indefinite space of 
time, that might have been long or short. 

At last Celia came in quickly, and wearing a 
street-dress. 

" My dear Alice ! " she said gladly, and her 
gladness was hard to bear. 

''Don't be glad to see me," said poor Alice, 
starting back from her, ''not until you have heard 
what I have to say." 

"Ah ! I am glad to see you, whatever you have 
to say," said Celia. There was something gone 
out of her voice. "Will you come up to my 
room, or your own } Why didn't you go to your 
room as usual ? " 

So she went quietly to the pleasant, familiar 
room that was called hers ; and there was no 



286 AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

opportunity for explanation, until the two ladies 
had dined sensibly and informally by daylight. 

Then they went, by tacit consent, into Celia's 
sitting-room. 

As they went in, Celia closed the door, less as 
a precaution than as an opening ceremony. 

It was a thoroughly painful scene, — a good 
woman relentless, and a just one cruel. Where is 
she who is generous to the woman who has 
wronged her son } And was not Harry as a son 
to Celia } 

For some time Alice bore it very well : but her 
nature was not changed into something totally 
different ; only illumined and in some sense con- 
trolled by a new light, — a light that was human 
and fallible, and that had been nearly eclipsed by 
the petty, vexing trials of that hard day. 

At last her temper flashed out as vindictively 
as if there had been no change at all, — 

"If you think so highly of Harry, it is a pity 
you do not keep him for yourself." 

An inexpressible pang of remorse and humilia- 
tion seized her, even as she spoke. 

Was this the fruit of her good resolutions, — 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 2% J 

that she should turn malicious, treacherous, un- 
just, under her first day of trial, and begin her 
search for something better, by coarsely insulting 
one who was (after all) her mistaken friend ? She 
sprang across the room, somehow she flung her- 
self down by Celia, she caught her hands whether 
she would or no. 

*' O Celia ! forgive me ! You know I did not 
mean it, — I could not. Every thing has been so 
hard. I have tried not to be selfish : I have 
thought of Harry, I have tried not to think of 
myself. I know what I am doing, and what I am 
losing; but it seemed to me — there might be 
something better." 

All Celia's anger had gone out under the per- 
sonal thrust. She looked down at Alice, who 
knelt beside her in the old attitude, the old impul- 
siveness. 

"Something better," she said slowly. *'Ah, I 
hope there is ! " And so they were reconciled 
in as much as was possible. 

It was well that it was so : for, in spite of all 
that Alice had renounced and determined, there 
was still before her the barren necessity of living, 
and if she did not mean to go back to that old 



288 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

life in Unity, she must accept Celia's hospitality 
and help. 

The first thing that she did was to seal a 
package made up of letters and trinkets and her 
heavy, brilliant ring, and send it to Harry with a 
brief, badly-worded note, which expressed nothing 
of her long struggle, or the generous and tender 
thoughts that had mingled with it. 

She was not allowed to see him. Celia said 
it was better so ; and, though Alice had her own 
opinion on the subject, she was glad to accept 
any offered terms of peace. 

And when sentimental matters were decided, 
these two women, equally ignorant of what they 
undertook, began the weary task of finding a suit- 
able occupation for a young lady with little 
slender hands that had never been trained to any 
thing, and quick brains furnished with a good 
deal of the nondescript mixture called general 
information, and something of the indefinite arti- 
cle called culture. 

Alice found that cases like hers were common 
enough : she also found that they were very 
frequently and considerably discussed in the col- 
umns of dailies and periodicals. 



AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 289 

She Studied the subject from this journalistic 
standpoint, as well as from that of her own neces- 
sities, but was not conspicuously enlightened. 

It seemed to her that the phases of the discus- 
sion had an odd faculty of reproduction. Singu- 
larly hackneyed were the barren generalizations 
and practical suggestions, — usually quite imprac- 
ticable ; singularly familiar were the arguments in 
favor of content with home and natural protect- 
ors, and their undeniable answer that women 
are not invariably provided either with natural 
protectors or with homes. Familiar, too, the 
statements of things unattainable which women 
attempt, and of things attainable in which they 
might succeed and will not. 

Alice was happily free from one common source 
of disappointment : she had no illusions as to her 
talents, — she did not think she could write 
poems, or sing songs, or even decorate panels and 
clam-shells. 

Her weakest trait was of quite an opposite 
character : she had no great faith in her capability 
of doing any thing. 

There was a point in her favor that looked 
to be of considerable importance, and that was 



290 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Celia's social influence. But then, Celia had 
never learned to make practical use of her social 
influence : none of her friends desired a governess 
or companion, — such was the position she had 
hoped to secure for Alice ; and, worst of all, it 
was now the season when every one was leaving 
town. 

This last fact was an additional distress to 
Alice. The hot days caused her pangs of remorse 
and intolerable impatience, when she thought 
that she was still keeping Celia in her city-house. 

Altogether it was a weary time. 

One afternoon she came in, in a state of com- 
plete collapse. 

" It is of no use, Celia," she said desperately. 
** There is nothing I could do that is not done 
better by hundreds and as well by thousands of 
others. I had best go back to Unity, and ask 
aunt Eunice to train me for a housemaid — if I 
am not too stupid for that, even." 

" Don't go yet," said Celia. " I have heard of 
something that may be to your advantage. One 
of my Philadelphia acquaintances called here to- 
day, — Mrs. Crane. She is stopping in New York 
on her way to some place in Maine where she 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 29 1 

goes for the summer, and she wants a governess 
for her little girls." 

" It is of no use," said Alice gloomily. " She 
will expect me to teach them Greek or algebra or 
Kensington-stitch, or something else I have never 
heard of." 

"They are too young for Greek and algebra," 
said Celia ; " and perhaps she would dispense with 
the Kensington-stitch." 

That night Alice scarcely slept for excitement. 
Her highest aspirations had resolved themselves 
into a trembling hope that she might be consid- 
ered capable of teaching Mrs. Crane's little girls. 

Happily she was considered capable. 

Mrs. Crane came next day, — a thin, faded 
woman, with a half pretty, aquiline face. 

It seemed as if life could not be very hard with 
this neutral-colored creature, with her expression 
of weak amiability. 

The season, that had been so great a disadvan- 
tage to Alice, was now favorable to her. Mrs. 
Crane was anxious to secure a governess for the 
little girls, and was somewhat pressed for time : 
an efficient young woman whom she had engaged, 
had disappointed her in the most shocking manner. 



292 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

And now at last Celia's social influence became 
of value. Mrs. Crane was more than willing to 
conciliate Mrs. Crosby. 

And so it happened that she was good enough 
to express herself as extremely pleased with 
Alice, and the matter was settled to the satisfac- 
tion of every one concerned. 

Mrs. Crane was detained in New York for two 
or three days longer, and during that time Alice 
remained with Celia. It seemed to her a space 
in which every thing had ceased : all the old con- 
ditions of her life had passed away. 

Two things happened to her in this time that 
were unexpected, but not remarkable. 

In reading one of the morning papers, she 
came upon the announcement of a newly pub- 
lished romance by Mr. Kenneth Lawrence. She 
read the little printed lines with a feeling of ex- 
treme thankfulness and relief. After all, she had 
not turned the current of his life aside ; and she 
thought, with a good deal of certainty and a tinge 
of bitterness, that his other wrongs might be left 
to take care of themselves. 

Her other surprise was trivial enough : the won- 
der was that it had not happened before. Walking 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 293 

up town one afternoon, she suddenly came face to 
face with Harry. There was a grave, awkward 
recognition, and each passed on quickly ; but she 
fancied that his glance at her frightened face was 
kind and sorry. Perhaps it was only a fancy, but 
it added another to her grateful and tender memo- 
ries of his generous kindness. 

The next day she went away. She was to meet 
Mrs. Crane at the station, and thus it happened 
that she left the house alone. 

Celia saw the door close on her with an inde- 
finable pang. 

She turned back into her empty house with a 
sense of old age and desolation that she had never 
felt before. She had not realized how large a 
space in her life had been filled by those two 
young figures, Alice and Harry. 

She sighed as she opened the library door and 
went in. 

The room had been dismantled preparatory to 
closing the house and her own departure next day. 
The furniture was tied up in ghastly white cloths, 
and pushed well into the middle of the room ; the 
pictures were dismally draped in yellow gauze. 

Celia will abhor yellow gauze while she lives. 



294 ^^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 



XVIII. 

*' I am hard to love, 
Yet love me, — wilt thou ? " 

Mrs. Browning. 

East Marlowe has its railway-station on a 
level with the grade, but at the top of a hill 
from the village, which lies in a veritable scoop 
of the land below. A bad road climbs the ascent 
in two irregular curves ; but there is a shorter 
way, consisting of a steep flight of steps leading 
from the level below to the sky-line of the plat- 
form above. 

One October afternoon, a young man left the 
up-train due 5.30 p.m., and, crossing the platform, 
glanced carelessly over the village. What he saw 
chiefly was the scanty grove that half covers the 
little green in front of the Marlowe House, and 
liberal glimpses of the Marlowe House itself 
through the thin, russet foliage. 

Apparently the prospect did not interest him. 

He turned back into the little dingy-brown 



AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 295 

Station, consulted a time-table, and asked a ques- 
tion of the telegraph-operator. 

He came out in time to see the train give its 
backward jar, preparatory to starting, and also in 
time to see a figure, a young woman apparently, 
make a blind dash across from the top of the 
steps. 

Half-way she was stopped by a burly young 
fellow standing in the centre of the platform. 
He released her with a blunt *' Beg pardon, miss ; 
but it couldn't be done." The train rolled on. 

The young lady nodded hastily, and turned up 
the platform toward the new arrival. 

She wore rather a thick gauze veil ; but, in 
spite of this, he thought he recognized her, and 
thought it with a very considerable degree of sur- 
prise. He raised his hat, and said doubtfully, 
"Miss Dinsmore .? " 

She pushed her veil up with a trembling hand, 
and showed a pale face, and a forced smile under 
it. Finally she held the unsteady hand out to 
him, and said, " How do you do, Harry } " 

It was an awkward meeting, but not as bad as 
it might have been. 

"You see I have lost my train," said Alice. 



296 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

" That is very annoying," said Harry. Pause. 
" I hope it doesn't inconvenience you seriously ? " 

" I am separated from the rest of my party by 
the means." 

"Why, that is bad luck," said Harry. *' Can I 
be of any assistance to you ? " 

"I don't know," said Alice, raising her eyes 
with rather an anxious expression in them. " I 
want to go to Boston to-night, if I can. We 
were to take the express at Broxton, and now I 
suppose I have missed the connection. If you 
will find out whether there is a later train that I 
can take, and whether I can make it from here .'* 
I always get more or less mixed over time-tables." 

" Will you come in while I inquire } " said 
Harry. 

'*I would rather not. I hate the inside of rail- 
way-stations." 

As he went into the station, she watched him 
with a strange little feeling. It was a sense of 
amusement that had a sting about it somewhere : 
she was not sure where. 

So this was what became of would-be-dramatic 
situations. She made a headlong dash at a mov- 
ing train, and was stopped by the wrong man. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 297 

not an actor in the comedy at all. (This outsider 
was looking at her from below, at her slim young 
figure distinct against the sky.) She came upon 
her ill-treated lover, and sent him to overlook 
time-tables. Climax most peaceful and common- 
place ! 

Harry came back, wearing a worried expression. 
He had one of those adaptable young faces that 
take on the look of care earnestly, and shake it 
off lightly, exactly as their possessors take the 
measles, or love, or a popular excitement. 

"I'm afraid you can't do it," he said. "6.10 
is the train you have missed. 7.40 is a through 
train, doesn't stop at Broxton ; and there's no 
other before nine o'clock." 

"Ah ! then I must wait over until morning." 

" Is that very awkward for you } " 

"Oh, no! it does not matter. I can join Mrs. 
Crane to-morrow. She will not leave Boston 
before the next day." 

Harry looked abstracted. He was balancing 
the relative merits of ceremonious and colloquial 
phrases. Finally he said, "May I walk over to 
the hotel with you } " 

Alice looked up at him reproachfully, and then 



298 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

colored high, and looked down, thinking the re- 
proachful look in questionable taste. 

They felt that they had escaped stumbling upon 
something awkward : at first, they were not sure 
that they had escaped. 

"Shall we go down by the road 1 " said Alice. 

As they walked down into the abrupt valley, she 
felt the naturalness of walking with him, and the 
strangeness of their imperfectly renewed intimacy. 

The road was bordered with blackberry-vines, 
and the vines were covered with black, withered 
leaves. After a long summer, a severe frost had 
blackened and shrivelled the foliage that was 
everywhere unusually full. 

The little grove at the foot of the hill was a 
melancholy spectacle. 

"See those trees," said Alice. "The foliage 
looks like the foliage of stereoscopic views." 

"When I was a little fellow, people used to 
insist on amusing children with stereoscopes," 
said Harry. " I wonder whether they do now." 

"They used to show them to me," said Alice 
vaguely. " How I hated them ! " 

Harry laughed a little. "Why didn't you hate 
the people .'' " 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER, 299 

"I mean the people," said Alice. ''I thought 
they were horribly stupid : I think so still." 

By this time, they were down in the little grove. 

It was a scene that seemed to belong to no 
known season. The brown and shrunken leaves 
hung thick upon the trees, the blue sky was 
soft, and the air dry and mild. It suggested that 
this was an early June day, and that nature had 
suddenly died. 

In the middle of the grove was a little fountain, 
— a cheap, tawdry affair, that had fallen into com- 
plete shabbiness without the excuse of age. Its 
basin was marvellously battered ; its stream, half- 
choked at the orifice, sprang into the air at an 
absurd angle, and fell back with a feeble, ineffi- 
cient little splash. 

The face of the Marlowe House showed plainer 
from here. It was of a deep cream-color, and 
looked as unpleasantly new as the fountain looked 
prematurely old. 

'* How ugly every thing is ! " said Alice sud- 
denly, coming to a stop beside the fountain. 
" Why don't you ask me how I happened to miss 
that train } " 

''That is one of the questions it is never safe 



300 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

to ask," said Harry. ^' I haven't asked a question 
like that since I was a very small boy." 

Alice laughed ; though Harry evidently did not 
expect such a response to his little pleasantry, 
if it were intended as a pleasantry. He had 
launched it from the other side of the basin 
with rather a melancholy face. 

**This was not exactly my fault," said Alice. 
*' Mrs. Crane is always leaving something behind 
her. This time she left an opal ring : did you 
ever notice the queer faculty opals have of get- 
ting lost or mislaid } I thought I had time to go 
back for it, but it seems I had not." 

" And it seems that Mrs. Crane went on," said 
Harry. 

** That was natural enough," said Alice. " I 
dare say she is having the worst of it, travelling 
alone with the children." 

They stood for some moments longer by the 
fountain, exchanging other commonplaces ; and 
again for a little space in the entrance of the 
Marlowe House, when they had crossed the sandy 
road and the dusty lawn and the empty piazza, 
and Alice had sent for the key of her room. 

They parted with a certain sense of relief. 



AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 30I 

There was a sort of punctiliousness underneath 
the apparent freedom of their intercourse. 

The room that Alice came back to, had for her 
just that mingling of strangeness and familiarity 
that results from a brief occupancy, and a return 
after a briefer absence. 

It had an appearance of smartness which may 
have been caused by some frank touches of color 
in the panels of the door, and in the moulding 
elsewhere, and by the fact that its side curved 
into the bay-window which ran up the side of 
the Marlowe House. 

After taking off her hat and wrap, she drew a 
chair into the window, and opened the side case- 
ment looking toward the road. 

The prospect was meagre. To the right, the 
road disappeared around a wooded curve : to the 
left, a possible view was cut off by the hotel 
piazza. By leaning out, and a little to one side, 
she could see a glimpse, a little triangle, of its 
interior. In front of her window was the nearest 
tree of the grove, — a pine that was dying, not 
of winter, but of some blight which had turned 
its fine, strong needles yellow. 

She felt intolerably lonely and melancholy. 



302 AA^ HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Upon a reasonable view, there was nothing more 
than inconvenience in the fact that she had 
missed her train, and was detained at Marlowe 
another night, and nothing more than a certain 
amount of awkwardness in her meeting with 
Harry; but these things, or something else, — 
perhaps it was only a whim, — had sent her 
spirits down to the lowest ebb. 

While she sat there, the light was dying. By 
and by it was twilight. The pine lost its sickly 
tinge, and sank into the dimness ; the white road 
glimmered : nothing showed distinctly. 

She felt unreasonably nervous and timid and 
deserted. No, not quite deserted, while she was 
under the same roof with Harry. 

She fell to thinking of him in that pleasant 
summer-time that seemed so long ago. How blue 
his eyes were ! How, when he was pleased, he 
would say "Ah!" with the upward inflection; 
and how, when he was quite in earnest, he would 
scowl thoughtfully, but not at all unpleasantly ! 

It seemed to her that until now she had never 
thought of the strangeness of the meetings and 
partings of this world. 

You meet your enemy, and you talk amiably 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 303 

of the weather, and each other's travels and 
fortunes ; and you part from your friend in like 
easy fashion, and yet you see him no more, not 
that a fate or a tragedy comes between, but that 
the common chances of life take you in- one 
direction and him in another. 

Alice made a great many little trite reflections 
in those days. There were blanks in her experi- 
ence that had to be filled with the knowledge of 
things it was only wonderful she had not known 
long ago. She had to accept a great many little 
hard grains of commonplace with the rest of 
her newly acquired wisdom, if it could be called 
wisdom. 

Her generalities dwindled and clung dismally 
around the thoughts of her meeting with Harry 
when she had thought they were so finally and 
effectually parted. 

She indulged the gratuitous assumption that 
they would not meet again for years, perhaps 
not until both had grown old. And with all the 
advance she had made, and all the philosophy she 
could summon, she could not bring herself to 
think that any thing would be productive of much 
satisfaction when she was an old woman. 



304 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

By this time the light outside had changed 
again. Somewhere the moon was rising. Alice 
could not see it ; it was behind her as she sat : 
but she saw the gray dimness that had covered 
the world of sickly, dying colors melt into a clear, 
increasing light ; finally it gave way to an austere 
splendor of white-and-black. 

Where there were shadows, they seemed to lie 
in black masses like some dense substance. The 
grass that bordered the road showed black : the 
road itself looked like a light ribbon, most like in 
that its edge was so sharply defined. The pine 
grew into sight, distinct yet somehow spectral, less 
an actual tree than its sign, as that pale brightness 
was the sign of another light. That little triangle 
of the piazza-floor showed absolutely white and 
brilliant, cut sharply from the diagonal shadow. 

As Alice watched, a figure came into this little 
lighted space. She recognized Harry at once. 

He came out to the edge of the piazza, made 
a slow turn, and walked back into the shadow, 
and out of view under the roof. In a moment 
he came back again, and this was repeated several 
times. It was all that was visible of his walk up 
and down the piazza. 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 305 

Presently he came to a standstill in the moon- 
lit space. Alice still watched him, feeling a gen- 
tle, soothing melancholy as she looked. He was 
standing exactly as he stood the day she watched 
him through Celia's garden-gate. 

It was wonderful how like her feeling was to 
the feeling she had in that far-off time. Now, as 
then, the important element in it was that honest, 
affectionate liking for Harry. 

This pleasant minor sentiment seemed to have 
a great degree of vitality. It was incredible, the 
changes of feeling it had survived. 

As she watched him, she had a certain content 
in thinking that he probably made less of the situa- 
tion than she did. This was not based upon any 
sort of superciliousness, although it had its root in 
her knowledge of the limitations of his nature. 

Her pleasure lay partly in the memory of how 
ingenuously he had acknowledged his bounds, 
how frankly and shrewdly he had declined to go 
beyond them, and how they had seemed the 
guardians of his sensible, cheery simplicity ; and 
partly in recognizing any trait of her friend's, 
merely because it was his. 

She leaned there for some time with her cheek 



3o6 Ajv honorable surrender. 

on her palm, and the top of her head against the 
window-frame. She felt secure in the darkness, 
and peaceful in her reflections. 

Suddenly she was roused by a thought as star- 
tling as a blow in the face. She actually felt her 
cheeks grow hot in the mild, soft air. 

She had suddenly remembered that she had 
not gone down to supper, and it instantly followed 
that Harry would think she had remained away 
for the purpose of avoiding him. 

She sprang up, smarting under the acknowl- 
edgment of her stupid, careless blunder. The 
situation had been left in her hands for the exer- 
cise of delicacy, of tact, of common humanity, 
she told herself with a woman's exaggeration ; and 
this was what she had done with it. She had 
thought Harry did not make the most of the situ- 
ation. She had made the most of it in one sense, 
at least, in the most intolerable sense, — she had 
made the most of it to annoy and vex and wound 
Harry in this last meeting of their lives. The 
sense of this, and of his nearness, and of the 
impossibility of his ever being so near again, was 
so strong that she leaned out of the window, and 
called to him, " Harry ! O Harry ! " 



• \ 

AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 307 

She shrank back into the darkness. " I sup- 
pose I meant to shout my explanation from the 
window," she said, in strong disgust. " Now I 
shall have to go down to him." She was more 
like the old Alice of swift changes and unsparing 
self-ridicule than she had been for many months. 

She was out of her room before she thought of 
the possible embarrassment of finding any one 
else on the piazza. 

Happily there was no one else on the piazza. 
Harry was still standing in the moonlight, and 
still looking up for the origin of the call. 

He started nervously when she touched his 
sleeve. 

"You here? Why — I beg your pardon," he 
added, recovering himself ; " but I was sure you 
called me from above — a moment ago." 

" So I did," said Alice ; ** but — I came down 
— I wanted to tell you, to explain. I did not 
come down to supper because " — 

Harry's eyes fell : he looked at the piazza-floor. 

Alice burst out desperately, *' Because — oh ! 
because I was not hungry : I forgot the time, 
and " — 

It certainly was not a fluent explanation. She 



308 AA' HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

could have laughed and cried in hysterical rage 
and distress at the pitiful absurdity of it. 

As had happened before, the advantage lay 
with Harry's directness. He took it. 

"I think I understand," he said hesitatingly. 
"You mean, perhaps — that you didn't mean to 
avoid me 1 " He was looking at her again. 

"Yes," said Alice, with a kind of helpless 
relief, and raising her eyes to his. "That is it. 
I am glad you can understand : it is not at all to 
my credit that you do." 

" If you had not come down I should not 
understand." They were looking away from 
each other once more. " It is very kind. I ap- 
preciate it — truly." 

" I must go in," said Alice, beginning to walk 
away. 

f* Won't you stay a while } " asked Harry. " If 
you would take a turn up and down the piazza ; 
or, why shouldn't we go over in the grove t " 

Alice felt an exaggerated flash of self-contempt. 
What was that nonsense about limitations } He 
saw at once the way to prove that he under- 
stood her was to presume a little upon her favor. 

" I would like to go over there," she said im- 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 309 

pulsively, coming back again. She stood as if 
ready to go. 

Harry looked down at her doubtfully. *' It is 
warm, but " — 

'* But people usually wear hats," said Alice, 
putting her hand up to her uncovered head. 
« Why, so they do ! I had forgotten mine." She 
laughed, her own fresh laugh, and fairly ran into 
the house. Harry winced at that, for the first time. 

She came out again, wearing a hat, but no wrap 
or gloves. He was standing at the door. 

They crossed the piazza, and went down the 
steps. 

" Will you take my arm ? " said Harry. She 
hesitated, without meaning to do so. 

At that moment she trod on a broken plank in 
the walk : it tilted unexpectedly, and flung her 
against his side. He drew her hand through his 
arm without further comment. 

When they came to the little fountain, it looked 
quite rustic and venerable in the moonlight. By 
daylight it was only provincial and shabby. 

The illusion of the season was now almost 
complete : except that the fallen leaves rustled so 
under foot, it was a summer evening. 



3IO AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Alice half-knelt, half-crouched beside the basin ; 
keeping one hand on its edge, while with the 
other she picked up dry leaves, and set them 
afloat on the water. 

'* Do you know this was meant to be a grand 
park ? " she asked. 

"Then, it is far enough off the intention," said 
Harry. 

Alice set more leaves afloat. When she stooped 
to one side to gather them, the slender hand that 
remained on the basin's edge showed above her 
head. *' It was to be a part of the grounds of 
the Marlowe House. The Marlowe House was 
to have very large grounds." 

Harry did not manifest any particular interest ; 
and, after a pause, Alice went on, " It is only fif- 
teen years or so since the railroad came here, you 
know. At that time there was a rich man here. 
His name was Marlowe : the village was re-named 
for him. It seems he left here when he was a 
boy, and came back very rich a great many years 
after, like the old-fashioned stories. (By the by, 
I wonder how many years it is since any one 
has written a story like that ?) And then he gave 
the town a library, and re-built the schoolhouse, 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 3 1 1 

and helped the churches, I believe. Finally they 
changed the Indian name of the village for his. 
Then the railroad came. By this time he was 
quite old ; and I suppose he must have lost the 
shrewdness or foresight, or whatever it was, that 
had made his fortune, for he somehow got the 
idea that Marlowe could be made a grand fashion- 
able summer resort. Of course that is what he 
called it. To be sure, there is a fine summer 
climate here, and there are pleasant drives, and a 
lake, and a little cave : but it is not enough ; peo- 
ple don't come. So he built the Marlowe House; 
and, before it was finished, he had a telegram one 
morning, and dropped like a dead man when he 
had read it ; and very soon it was known that he 
had lost as much of his fortune as he had given 
away before, and that was a great deal. But he 
was not dead ; and he got up, and finished the 
Marlowe House, though he had to give up the 
grounds and gardens he had planned for it. I 
don't think they would have been very handsome ; 
for he had his own way in building the hotel, and 
I never saw any thing much uglier. And, after 
it was finished, the people never came ; and he 
lost more and more heavily At last he gave up 



312 AJV HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

the hotel, but not soon enough. It swamps every 
one, they say : some one has been losing there 
ever since. And, by this time, he seemed to 
have lost all his good luck, or good sense, which- 
ever it was : he was always speculating, and 
always growing poorer, until at last he had noth- 
ing to venture. Before he died, he came to the 
charity of some relatives of his. They were chil- 
dren of a man who had never liked or believed 
in him — not even that he was honest. Now, 
isn't that melancholy.^ Why, isn't it a tragedy.? 
Some one told me the story when we first came 
here, and I have never been able to get it out of 
my mind." 

The fountain made two or three of its feeble 
little splashes audible. Alice had been talking 
so steadily that they had not noticed it before. 

"Alice, is this the way these people treat you?" 
said Harry abruptly. 

Alice looked up from her floating leaves with a 
start. Her hat was pushed back from her face, 
and her hair was pushed back also : the little soft, 
thick locks were half uncurled. 

" Is that what you've been thinking of all this 
time.-* I don't suppose you have heard any thing 



AX HONORABLE SURRENDER. 313 

I've said," she said kindly. '' If it is the way 
they treat me, it is not at all a bad way. You 
can't reasonably expect Mrs. Crane to look after 
me, as if I were her daughter or her younger 
sister. Besides, if you knew Mrs. Crane, you 
would know, that, if she thought any thing when 
she took that train this afternoon, she thought I 
could rejoin her at Broxton. I dare say she is 
much more distressed about it than I am. The 
separation is really worse for her — more incon- 
venient." 

Pause, in which the fountain made other weak- 
minded splashes. 

" She really is a very good, well-meaning wo- 
man, Harry; and I am very — fortunate. I am 
not in the least badly treated, or even neglected. 
I can't possibly pose as an ill-used governess." 

"Don't you find that water cold } " said Harry. 

** Perhaps I do," said Alice. She stood up 
submissively, and wrung her hands together. 
Her handkerchief was naturally in the pocket of 
her dress : this was hidden under some flounce, 
or fold of drapery, and her chilled fingers refused 
to find it. 

Harry produced a silk handkerchief, and, quietly 



314 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

taking her small, cold hands between his own, 
dried them in its soft folds. 

** There is the advantage of having more than 
one pocket," he said. For the moment he had 
completely recovered his pleasant fraternal man- 
ner, that she had trusted more entirely than any 
other regard she had ever received. 

She looked up at him with a kind of timid 
pleasure that made her eyes very sweet. They 
were always large eyes ; but now she had grown 
somewhat thinner, and this made their size 
slightly noticeable. 

After standing by the fountain a little longer, 
they went and sat down on a melancholy and 
disappointed-looking rustic seat that faced it. 

Doubtless this bench had represented to the 
unfortunate Marlowe many of its kind overflowing 
with beauty and fashion. 

"When have you seen Celia Crosby.?" asked 
Alice. 

" I saw her in New York a week ago," said 
Harry. 

"Ah ! she has returned to the city, then. 
Sometimes she likes to stay out of town so late 
in the season." 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 315 

*' She closed the cottage, and went back a 
month ago. Do you remember Mrs. Winters .-* " 

** Oh, yes ! " 

" She is with Mrs. Crosby now. I think it is 
on her account that Mrs. Crosby returned to town 
so early : she has been quite ill." 

" I am sorry for that," said Alice. She added 
thoughtfully, *'Celia must always be taking care 
of some one." 

** But I shouldn't say that Mrs. Winters could 
fill your place," said Harry, with his unexpected 
talent for answering thoughts. He instantly 
realized that it would have been better not to 
speak, but it was too late. 

Alice did not answer at once. Among the 
most frequent flaws in her wisdom were the 
illogical self-reproaches to which she had lately 
subjected herself. Against reason though it was, 
she could not always rid herself of the thought 
that she had deserted Celia ; and the image of 
her friend lonely, and tending an unfortunate but 
still uncongenial invalid, brought something into 
her throat that half choked her when she tried 
to speak. By and by she got rid of this feeling, 
or suppressed it at all events, and went on, — 



3l6 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

''Have you ever felt — I don't suppose you 
have, and it's a stupid way to feel — but has 
it ever seemed to you that some sort of dreari- 
ness — unhappiness — was falling upon all your 
friends ? — a kind of general wretchedness seiz- 
ing upon one after another until the world was 
full of it ? " 

*' I don't know that I ever thought of that," 
said Harry gently. It was pretty, the regard he 
had for her opinions, whether they were beyond 
his own simple philosophy, or outside of it by 
what he considered a woman's foolishness. " I 
suppose I know, in a general way, that the world, 
the large world, is full of unhappiness ; and, when 
any special case comes to my knowledge, I say 
there is a poor fellow getting his share of it." 

Alice suddenly made a little stifled sound that 
she had tried in vain to suppress. Something in 
what Harry had said — perhaps it was the allusion 
to the large world — had quite finished her self- 
control. 

" Alice ! " said Harry. *' Have I " — 

"No, you haven't," said Alice. "I — oh! I 
am ashamed ; but I knew I should go on in this 
way when I lost that train. There is no reason 



n 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 'iylj' 

for it. I never was more consistently cheerful in^ 
my life." 

" Oh ! evidently," said poor Harry, with desper- 
ate, unskilled sarcasm. He was so miserable he 
positively could not help it. 

He got up, and walked about restlessly. The 
fountain splashed as weakly as ever. 

After a time, Alice put her handkerchief away,, 
and stood up. 

"Shall we go back.?" said Harry. ''I — well, 
I can't stand this any longer without making a 
fool of myself. I don't propose to annoy you in 
that way if I can help it. Oh ! don't suppose I 
intended to inflict any thing of this sort upon 
you. Don't you think I am man enough to bear 
what I must, and lose what I must, and not whine, 
about it } But when I see you " — 

Alice said something about " Harry, best, kind- 
est friend." 

She was trembling so that she put one hand on 
the arm of the bench. 

'' 0\\\ friend ! '' said the young man. **What 
do you think I care about that t Where is the 
use of it } I am of no use to you. I can do 
nothing for you. When I see you alone, left to 



3l8 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

yourself, and having the worst of it, — for you 
are having the worst of it, — I might as well be 
your enemy." 

^'We can't have any thing over again," said 
Alice stupidly. 

That stopped him. Somehow he had both of 
her hands. ** Do you know what you said } " he 
said excitedly. '' Do you mean it } Can we have 
any thing over again } " 

''O Harry!" said Alice, ''surely I didn't say 
that ! " 

*' No, no. You said — oh! never mind what 
you said. My darling" — 

Alice said ''O Harry!" again, and in such a 
tone of distress that he let her go. He thought 
that was all he should ever be able to do for her, 
that it was all over. 

But she did not go very far. 

She sat down on the bench once more, and hid 
her face in her hands. • 

"It is too soon," she said in a half-whisper. 

Harry came a little nearer. He was fairly 
puzzled ; but a delicious light was breaking in 
upon him, though he could scarcely trust it yet. 

" O Harry, it is so much too soon ! " 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 319 

It was her very last objection ; and it was easy 
to overcome, like any right-minded obstacle at 
the end of the story. 

There was one thing the thought of which 
neither AHce nor Harry could endure ; and that 
was a repetition, or the semblance of a repetition, 
of the scenes of their former engagement. 

They shrank with one impulse from a return 
to New York, from the familiar rooms of Celia's 
house, and even from Celia's friendliness and 
guardianship. 

Also a long engagement was unnecessary, and, 
to a certain extent, impracticable. 

If Harry followed Alice to Philadelphia, he 
could scarcely conduct the most reticent love- 
making without inconvenience to Mrs. Crane and 
the little girls ; and Alice felt that an entire sepa- 
ration was a trial of his patience that she had no 
right to inflict. 

So, when he did follow her to Philadelphia, she 
was persuaded to grant the wish he came to urge ; 
and, before the fortunate days of October were 
gone, they were quietly married. 

Mrs. Crane amply justified Alice's praises. 



320 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Though again fated to lose her governess, she 
behaved with the greatest amiability and friendli- 
ness. They were married in her pleasant parlor. 

Alice had one prominent thought on her wed- 
ding-day that she could not well share with Harry. 
She thought, and all her old affection returned 
in thinking, " Now, Celia has her heart's de- 
sire." 

Before they left the city next day, she wrote 
her a long letter. Among other things, she 
wrote : — 

" I know that I have failed in what I meant to do, though 
now I am not always sure what that was ; but I cannot 
believe that my thoughts, or my attempts, are, or will be, 
useless to me. What I most wished to avoid was, entangle- 
ment with the lives of others. Somewhere in my blood, or 
my brain, I have a great fear of assuming trusts for which 
I am not fit: but now the sense of responsibility has 
slipped from me ; or, if it has not, I see that wherever I 
go, and whatever I do, I must entangle myself with other 
lives, and, if I cannot avoid this, I would rather submit to 
it in the old way. There is no denying that I am glad it is 
the old way, and that I am doing what is usual for women." 

But when Alice read this fragmentary confes- 
sion, she became dissatisfied with it, and finally 



AM HONORABLE SURRENDER. 32 1 

tore the letter across. She wrote a shorter one, 
and signed, for the first time, "AUce Ash- 
ley." 

The principal reason for her act was a con- 
viction, that, if her mind wandered in depths or 
shallows uncongenial to her husband, she had 
best admit no companion to her reflections. 

Finally this took the practical form of a deter- 
mination to seek no confidant for the thoughts 
she could not share with Harry. This is a toler- 
ably exalted resolution ; but, as Alice does not 
take that view of it, it has at least a chance of 
being successfully kept. 

Though she has left her fears, she has not left 
their lessons, nor forgotten the possibilities that 
they opened before her. 

She is not sure whether it was in the months 
of separation, or in the moment of meeting, that 
she reached the certainty of her power to make 
Harry happy. It is enough that she has reached 
it. It is the security in which she rests, and the 
ground on which her aspirations are built. And 
it is at the root of the cheerful courage with 
which she hopes to meet all other duties and 
responsibilities of life. 



322 AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 

Thus Celia had her heart's desire. But the 
first knowledge of it threw her into some embar- 
rassment. 

In the first place, she had to tell Mrs. Win- 
ters, who was now recovering, and was thinner, 
browner, and more restless than ever. She list- 
ened, and looked at Celia sharply with her bright 
eyes. 

*' I suppose it is very fortunate and suitable 
from any point of view but mine," she said. 
"But, all the same, it is a surrender." 

Celia took this down-stairs to think of. 

She sat down before the library-fire, — a beau- 
tiful wood-fire, solid and blazing on a ruddy bed 
of coals below. 

On top was a little fairy cylinder, black fret- 
work without, all glowing within. 

" Yes, it is a surrender : but it is a surrender 
in act, to one of the most loyal and generous 
among men ; in theory, to impulses that grow 
stronger, and gather sweetness in their strength, 
with every year of a woman's life. 

" This time I am not responsible. That ought 
to console me, if I needed consolation. 

" Surely I am a most unreasonable woman. Ah ! 



AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. 323 

* Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is 
satisfied ? ' 

** I shall be very glad to see their young faces 
when they come back again." 

Here the little fairy cylinder rolled from the 
top of the fire. Breaking in its fall, it sent up 
two scarlet flashes, then crumbled, glowing, into 
the red coals beneath. 



WOMAN'S HANDIWORK 

IN MODERN HOMES. 

BY 
CONSTANCE CARY HARRISON. 

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CUPID, M. D 

A STORY. 

By AUGUSTUS M. SWIFT. 



1 Vol., 12mo, , - - Trice, $1,00 



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*^* For sale by all booksellers.^ or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of price, by 

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" To those who love n fure d'tdion, a healthful tone, and thought that leads up 
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*** For sale by all booksellers, or sent post-paid 7tpon receipt of price by 

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MAY 313:4 



